A discussion of Charles Burnett's 1978 film Killer of Sheep, with particular focus on the nihilistic, despairing pessimism of the film. Stan, the main character, has been worn down into an affectless figure whose sense of joy and human contact is all but eliminated. What space is there for joy and pleasure? Is escape possible? Is another sense of self and affect possible? Or does abandonment mean that the possibility of a confrontation and negation, as described by Angela Davis in her "Lecture on Liberation," requires deliberate leaving of the space of the neighborhood in search of the oppressor?