Mask thy self, Mask thy Daughter

 Killer of Sheep is a heavy film, one rich in the stories of the post Watts' riots of 1965. Complex and engaging, it follows the story of a slaughterhouse worker named Stan and his attempts of how to be an African-American man in this time while dealing with his inability to engage with his wife and two children and how he must care for them at the same time.

A scene relatively early is one where Stan's daughter, Angela, is wearing a rather disturbing dog mask. We see her brother pull at it and engage with it, but the key moment is when she leaves the house and looks almost right into the camera, hand in mouth as if nothing blocks her view from yours.

In many ways we, as viewers, can stand in for Stan. This is the first time in the film we have seen Angela but yet we do not see her face. We are seeing a distortion, a mask on her being. In reflects not only back on us but back onto the character of Stan.

Masks do not only physically distort a face, that is hide it or hide a distortion much like the Phantom does in Phantom of the Opera, but it also distorts psychologically. The euphemism “putting on a mask” usually refers to when someone wants to hide something or their feelings.

In many ways this is what Stan is doing. He can't relate to his family well. He is wearing a mask. Now Angela is to. But she is playing in some sense. She is masking her face from her father but mirroring it at the same time. She is mirroring his inability to relate and his own masking of his desires.

The next thing she does is go over to a little boy with her mask in. It is outright creepy. She approaches him without speaking as if it is play. He looks on like this is all a joke. This play juxtaposes against Stan's struggles with the kitchen and the crumbling house.

And for his own part Stan struggles to see past the mask as much as Angela does. He can not relate to his kids out of the fear of raising them into the violence family system his own father did. This mirrors the scene when his father yells at him; he puts on the mask of strength and blinds himself to his relationship in this world. Stan distorts and masks his own pain as Angela masks her childish play.

Its a disturbing and grotesque mask just as the mask of the dog is, so is Stan's own pain in the face of his father. This begins to put a mask on him, how he sees the world from that point on. He was a child, all be it much older than Angela is, but proceeded to affect the way he sees the world.

What will this do to Angela? She is beginning to mask or come to an age where she can put on a psychological mask. Maybe the mask that she wears, the old worn and twisted dog, is just the mask of her father; an old, warn dog run down by the unseeable mask he wears.