Killer of Sheep

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🎙️ EPISODE 533: 08.16.22 I can only care about numbers for so long and how many. This is the thing about numbers. Some good ones: 365, 10, 24, 500, a million. How many days will you live? How many days will you enter a slaughterhouse and return to your family broken? That last one's a zero for me, dawg. This is the 700th film I've reviewed on this site. Recording, writing, and editing the material for this project is not as arduous or soul-crushing as going to work at a place that kills sheep for people to eat. In fact, it should be the polar opposite: soul-affirming rather than soul-crushing. It doesn't always feel like that, though, and I often wonder why I work so hard to keep going. I think the simple fact that we wake up each day, if we're lucky enough to wake up or not wake up, and we find ourselves slipping into some wave that carries us to the end of that day, then that is good enough. That's pretty good.

We don't need to enjoy the day? Who said that was part of the deal? Now we find ourselves less and less essential to the mechanisms which keep the great wheel turning, so — on some level — finding those waves is getting harder all the time (and the great lie is that it's getting easier). Sheep again. It's sheep, not lamb or goat. I liked how the title implied a story you never really see. It's an aspect of this unspectacular life, just as haunting as anything else: children in rubber dog masks, breaking a motor immediately after you buy it, losing the spark so bad you can't tell if you ever saw it to begin with. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.



We should be counting sheep, not killing them. We always want to hurt somebody because that's the way nature is, as if leaning into our animal instincts is the only way out of the shit. This is a theory that rarely proves true but it's prevalence in society is not going away anytime soon. It might even be gaining steam. The only thing that looks good dying is a rose, I heard somebody say once. Us animals wish we had it so easy.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 532 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 533 ⫸

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Killer of Sheep is a 1978 American drama film edited, shot, written, produced, and directed by Charles Burnett. Shot primarily in 1972 and 1973, it was originally submitted by Burnett to the UCLA School of Film in 1977 as his Master of Fine Arts thesis. It features Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, and Charles Bracy, among others, in acting roles. It was released on November 14, 1978.