Review of The Scar of Shame

So says the final title card in the 1927 silent film THE SCAR OF SHAME, a teaching tool designed to enforce a strict "caste system" for ordinary Americans. The moral of SHAME is that you can take a girl out of the ghetto, but you cannot take the ghetto out of the girl. Though African Americans were the target audience for SHAME, Hollywood always has been an equal opportunity preacher of this sermon. Any poor person who tries to rise above his "station in life" gets slapped down by the end of most movies. Examples abound. Just look at last year's THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, or the first ROCKY flick. Did the MILLION DOLLAR BABY have any more hope of seeing her 30th birthday than "Louise Howard" does here in SHAME? Some folks say that "hope floats," but generally in American cinema, anything that rises to the top soon gets flushed down the toilet. Tinsel Town kowtows to the caste system imposed on we 90% by their self-proclaimed and glorified One Per Cent. The "Middle Class" buffer between Them and Us--60% under President Kennedy--is down to about 9% now, and shrinking.