Scar Of Shame Analysis

In the article, Scar of Shame: Skin Color and Caste in Black Silent Melodrama by Jane Gaines, Gaines breaks down the technicalities and formalities of the 1927 film, Scar of Shame. She starts by inferring that as soon blacks begun to finance and direct their own films, they predominantly only produced melodramatic films. A melodrama is a very dramatic but sensational piece of work that consists of various overdrawn characters and heart staking events for the purpose of appealing to the audience’s emotions. Melodramas not only accommodate various social problems of each new decade but it translates them into hypothetical scenarios. It also quarters the address which assumes power and the order of events that advises resignation. This genre is built on a paradox. Melodramas have the capability to transcribe heavy dilemmas into more
The formal definition for a caste is a group or class of individuals who have inherited exclusive privileges passed down from their ancestors. As Gaines states in the article the film has a high regard when it comes to a person particular caste system. The mother of Alvin in the film is very adamant about him marrying a girl named Helen, not Louise, who is born into a lower class caste system. If she doesn’t belong to their set, he cannot marry her, which is the reason hid his marriage for as long as he did.
A melodramatic mode of address as Gaines states is in the early 1920’s with race and class constitution. The story of Scar of Shame was produced specifically for the pleasure of a black audience which was created by the black bourgeoisie with the collaborative efforts from the whites for entertainment purposes of the classes below them. This class difference ultimately adding on to the already northern urban vs southern rural distinctions, as the migration of the southern folks created a new proletariat which evolved into an audience into the black theater