Formerly a missionary, Lois Weber made films to lecture the public on social and moral problems within the entertainment of stories and cinematic effects. In at least two of her films that I've seen, "Hypocrites" and "Too Wise Wives", I think she did artful things with the wrapping outside of the presentation of the moral and societal messages, and, overall, Weber was a competent filmmaker. She cared about the craft of her medium—the art and the entertainment that ensured her an audience for her lectures. The good parts of "The Blot" are because of that. The lecture, however, is bland and, upon closer inspection, troublingly classist.
The blot is that professors and preachers, middle-class lecturers much like Weber herself, are underpaid. Most of the characters' genteel poverty is that they can't easily afford luxuries, which is depicted in the film through the courting of the professor's daughter. Her mother neglects to buy the sick daughter nourishing food and is behind on paying for their home, while she instead purchases tea to encourage the romantic interests of Phil West, the rich suitor, and begrudgingly serves tea to the minister, the poor suitor, out of some sense of appropriateness. As Richard Koszarski said ("The Years Have Not Been Kind to Lois Weber", Village Voice), "poverty is dramatized in 'The Blot' by a family's inability to set a proper tea for prospective suitors." Additionally, the minister can't afford shoe polish or nice-looking shoes, which undermine his chances with the daughter.
As Jennifer Parchesky ("Lois Weber's The Blot: Rewriting Melodrama, Reproducing the Middle Class", Cinema Journal) said, "The Blot" advocates the ordering and entitlement of classes, which the proper pay of lecturers is part of. Parchesky says the film depicts "the anxiety about the deterioration of the 'collar line' that had formerly distinguished white-collar workers from blue-collar laborers". She adds, "The distinction between 'hand work' and 'brain work', not income, was the prime definer of the collar line in the early 1920s." Thus, common laborers, represented here by the immigrant shoemaker and his family, the Olsens, are depicted as antagonists to middle-class entitlement. The implication is that the Olsens don't deserve the riches they flaunt, and they don't even have good taste (e.g. poor-fitting shoes, the archaic joke about the model-T Ford). Furthermore, Peter Olsen, another addition to the love triangle, is relegated to admiring the professor's daughter from afar.
Meanwhile, the very rich, represented mostly by their offspring students, Phil West and his set, are envisioned in a rather noblesse oblige fashion. Their considerably greater wealth isn't challenged or, as with the common laborers, compared to the pay of lecturers, and they have good taste, even if they're sometimes extravagant. Presumably, the Griggs family finds the solution to their problems through the generosity of Phil West and his father, as well as the prospective marriage of Phil and Amelia. Furthermore, although it seems almost feckless to mention in regards to a film from 1921, women are gendered as housewives, and the film comes close to being offensively xenophobic with the antagonizing of the success of the immigrant family. The class distinctions made in "The Blot" and its other possible bigotry would be easier to overlook if not for Weber's further espousals on such issues in prior photoplays, such as the pro-eugenics "Where Are My Children?". In these films, Weber exposed her underlying bigotry in defending the position in society of well-bred Caucasians, whether it was the fear of race-suicide or the loss of class distinctions.
Other problems that beset "The Blot" are its melodramatic conventions. Its love triangle excessively becomes a love pentagon: Phil West, Peter Olsen and the minister all love Amelia, and Juanita loves Phil. The character of Juanita seems especially unnecessary and underwritten. For example, no motivation is given for why she tails Phil West to the library. On a technical note, that scene also contains a particularly bad continuity error: where we see a shot of Juanita looking sad and jealous before the romantic leads exit the library.
Characters are constantly watching other characters—admiring them, envying them, or discovering their shame. Much of "The Blot" is a drama of keeping up with the Joneses. The film's opening title card makes the joke, "Men are only boys grown tall," which doesn't seem to have any relevance with the rest of the photoplay. On the contrary, the two housewives are the most petty, covetous and pathetically immature characters, and they and Phil West are the only ones to undergo significant change. A lecture against superficiality and materialism would've seemed more appropriate.
Technically, some of the best shots in "The Blot" are of the characters' material possessions, such as shoes, which focus attention on the characters' anxiety over their shabby footwear, or contrast the wealth of characters through matching cuts of their shoes. Additionally, Weber was good at selecting real locations and houses, decorating them and photographing them for her films.
Yet, the real purpose of the film remains its lecture. This is made most obvious in the film's most awkward sequence: where Phil shows articles describing, in banal generalities, the blot of lecturers' low pay, to his father. (By the way, this scene also contains a continuity error, as the two characters switch sides between shots at one point.) The sequence, however, delivers the message of the film, hopefully, to even those viewers who didn't get it through the main story. It's when the lecture is under the least cover of entertainment, as blunt as possible, a lecture inside a lecture. I wouldn't be so disappointed with the message, either, if there were more of a subtle underlying artistry to "The Blot", as there was with Weber's "Hypocrites" and "Too Wise Wives", or even "Where Are My Children?". Even beyond the classist bigotry of it, a lecture on the vitality of lecturers is inherently self-serving. Moreover, it's just too dry and unenlightening for me not to sympathize with those bored students in Professor Griggs's classroom.
The blot is that professors and preachers, middle-class lecturers much like Weber herself, are underpaid. Most of the characters' genteel poverty is that they can't easily afford luxuries, which is depicted in the film through the courting of the professor's daughter. Her mother neglects to buy the sick daughter nourishing food and is behind on paying for their home, while she instead purchases tea to encourage the romantic interests of Phil West, the rich suitor, and begrudgingly serves tea to the minister, the poor suitor, out of some sense of appropriateness. As Richard Koszarski said ("The Years Have Not Been Kind to Lois Weber", Village Voice), "poverty is dramatized in 'The Blot' by a family's inability to set a proper tea for prospective suitors." Additionally, the minister can't afford shoe polish or nice-looking shoes, which undermine his chances with the daughter.
As Jennifer Parchesky ("Lois Weber's The Blot: Rewriting Melodrama, Reproducing the Middle Class", Cinema Journal) said, "The Blot" advocates the ordering and entitlement of classes, which the proper pay of lecturers is part of. Parchesky says the film depicts "the anxiety about the deterioration of the 'collar line' that had formerly distinguished white-collar workers from blue-collar laborers". She adds, "The distinction between 'hand work' and 'brain work', not income, was the prime definer of the collar line in the early 1920s." Thus, common laborers, represented here by the immigrant shoemaker and his family, the Olsens, are depicted as antagonists to middle-class entitlement. The implication is that the Olsens don't deserve the riches they flaunt, and they don't even have good taste (e.g. poor-fitting shoes, the archaic joke about the model-T Ford). Furthermore, Peter Olsen, another addition to the love triangle, is relegated to admiring the professor's daughter from afar.
Meanwhile, the very rich, represented mostly by their offspring students, Phil West and his set, are envisioned in a rather noblesse oblige fashion. Their considerably greater wealth isn't challenged or, as with the common laborers, compared to the pay of lecturers, and they have good taste, even if they're sometimes extravagant. Presumably, the Griggs family finds the solution to their problems through the generosity of Phil West and his father, as well as the prospective marriage of Phil and Amelia. Furthermore, although it seems almost feckless to mention in regards to a film from 1921, women are gendered as housewives, and the film comes close to being offensively xenophobic with the antagonizing of the success of the immigrant family. The class distinctions made in "The Blot" and its other possible bigotry would be easier to overlook if not for Weber's further espousals on such issues in prior photoplays, such as the pro-eugenics "Where Are My Children?". In these films, Weber exposed her underlying bigotry in defending the position in society of well-bred Caucasians, whether it was the fear of race-suicide or the loss of class distinctions.
Other problems that beset "The Blot" are its melodramatic conventions. Its love triangle excessively becomes a love pentagon: Phil West, Peter Olsen and the minister all love Amelia, and Juanita loves Phil. The character of Juanita seems especially unnecessary and underwritten. For example, no motivation is given for why she tails Phil West to the library. On a technical note, that scene also contains a particularly bad continuity error: where we see a shot of Juanita looking sad and jealous before the romantic leads exit the library.
Characters are constantly watching other characters—admiring them, envying them, or discovering their shame. Much of "The Blot" is a drama of keeping up with the Joneses. The film's opening title card makes the joke, "Men are only boys grown tall," which doesn't seem to have any relevance with the rest of the photoplay. On the contrary, the two housewives are the most petty, covetous and pathetically immature characters, and they and Phil West are the only ones to undergo significant change. A lecture against superficiality and materialism would've seemed more appropriate.
Technically, some of the best shots in "The Blot" are of the characters' material possessions, such as shoes, which focus attention on the characters' anxiety over their shabby footwear, or contrast the wealth of characters through matching cuts of their shoes. Additionally, Weber was good at selecting real locations and houses, decorating them and photographing them for her films.
Yet, the real purpose of the film remains its lecture. This is made most obvious in the film's most awkward sequence: where Phil shows articles describing, in banal generalities, the blot of lecturers' low pay, to his father. (By the way, this scene also contains a continuity error, as the two characters switch sides between shots at one point.) The sequence, however, delivers the message of the film, hopefully, to even those viewers who didn't get it through the main story. It's when the lecture is under the least cover of entertainment, as blunt as possible, a lecture inside a lecture. I wouldn't be so disappointed with the message, either, if there were more of a subtle underlying artistry to "The Blot", as there was with Weber's "Hypocrites" and "Too Wise Wives", or even "Where Are My Children?". Even beyond the classist bigotry of it, a lecture on the vitality of lecturers is inherently self-serving. Moreover, it's just too dry and unenlightening for me not to sympathize with those bored students in Professor Griggs's classroom.