it's about time we made a start on this! If we're decided on Ripperology, which angle do you think we should go at it from?
Just typing 'Jack The Ripper' into any search engine brings up pages and pages of stuff - sifting out the good from the awful would be a bit like the old needle/haystack scenario I think. I might look into the whole concept of Ripperology and see if I can nail down when it sprang up as a 'bona fide' 'ology' to study and see where that leads me ... what do you think?
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Well, I have just read the Deborah Cameron essay and also the intro of JTR and the London Press and I am thinking that this whole ripperology thing homes in on the deviant side of us. You know how the media feeds the fascination in all of us into all things bad; Like the Yorkshire Ripper, The MOors Murderers, Foxy Knoxy - it allows us to get all the gory details and then moralise how BAD these people are - when really we are getting our 'hit' without the complicity..... is that twaddle?
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's twaddle at all ... but the thing that keeps coming to mind for me is the thought that, even today with press saturation of even the smallest of crimes, there's a part of us that compartmentalises the information we receive to the point that such things aren't 'real' anymore. Jack The Ripper is so often dissected (pardon the pun), discussed, theorised about, speculated upon, that the fact that 'he' committed horrific acts becomes secondary. In what way is a Ripperologist a student? How can the study of this phenomenon be useful? What does a Ripperologist hope to achieve in this field of 'study'? Ultimately I suppose all they want is to solve the case once and for all, but anyone with a grain of sense knows that this is simply not possible. I'm also interested in how the Ripper case and its continual re-evaluation also feeds into, or perhaps was the start of, the fascination with serial killers generally, to the point where, in the States in particular, women are falling over themselves to marry one - what's that about??
ReplyDeleteWell, I have looked up 'ripperology' and established who first coined the phrase and apparently it was first used in 1972.
ReplyDeleteI have also been reading a news article written in 1929 (By Norman Hastings) that recounts the events but the use of language makes it more like fiction than fact all 'he glided through the darkness' almost romanticising 'the terror'. So, even as early as 30 years after the events JTR was already a 'folk devil' and not really a real psychopath at all!!!
By the way in 1929 they were still suggesting that there were 12 victims - and this brings me onto another point. Who the devil was committing all these other crimes? and why is noone interested in that nutter - I mean killer?
That seems to be the case with Jack The Ripper more than any other killer - serial or otherwise - the language used to describe him seems romanticised: again going back to the recurring thought that, even after a relatively short space of time, he had become mythologised almost to the point of becoming a fictional character as opposed to a violent, almost definitely deranged, homicidal maniac ... is this the element that makes Ripperology so appealing? The thought that they're not dealing with a real person in contemporary surroundings?
ReplyDeleteWell, it's like we said today; if they find the killer (Sutcliffe, West, Shipman et al) it becomes all about them and the victims names are rarely remembered (How sad is that?) but even so with these modern day killers, in most medium at least the language is still vengeful and rarely romantic. No, there seems to be a special case for JTR. I think that it is to do with the 19th century and its effect on our culture. Fact and fiction blur. Dickens, Conan Doyle and the characters they created blur into fact and visa versa. If you think about Sweeny Todd as well - he's got a Depp movie and it's a musical!
ReplyDeleteSee, I got that wrong!! Apparently he was an urban legend that appeared first in a Penny Dreadful!!!
ReplyDeleteRightyo then....I've been thinking about quotes from academic sources, what about these?
ReplyDelete1. Ripperology what is it and why? (we know was a phrase first coined by Colin Wilson in 1972) but in the William Beadle book he opens page one with a quote from the Daily Telegraph; 'Some Monster in human form whose desperate wickedness goes free and undectected by force of it's own terrible audacity - (a) woman killer who renders the midnight streets dreadful with the footfalls of death' and then comments 'a myth was in the process of being created....a legend from an enervating creature who deserved only repugnance'
The BBC article quotes Paul Begg as saying; 'For most people Jack the Ripper personifies the fear that we all have of the lurker in the shadows, that thing we can offer no defence against' and also Neil Storey as suggesting that JTR's noteriety is linked to the gutterpress and comments; 'He became a stalking bogeyman that children were threatened with, a folk devil. Kids had skipping rhymes and played catch games that mentioned him'
Our absorption in the evil acts of others may be connected (should it be true) to Nietzshe's 'instict of freedom' theory whereby he believes that our desire to hurt others - to vent hostility towards them has been repressed; 'This instict of freedom forcibly made latent...repressed, incarcerated within...' (GM, II, sec 17)
Curtis L Perry's book connects the actions of the ripper and the salacious gutter press of the late 19th cent. and argues that the fascination with JTR is because of the pornographic nature of the reporting of the injuries to the women:
'Victorian journalists drew sharp distinctions between normative and deviant behavior, thereby reinscribing the dominant codes of social and sexual respectability. With these critical journalistic studies in mind, I have treated murder news as a social and cultural construct assembled by reporters who both influence and are influenced in turn by standards of approved behavior.'
Curtis Jr., L. Perry. Jack the Ripper and the London Press .
New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press, 2001. p 4.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/wolverhampton/Doc?id=10167948&ppg=13
Copyright © 2001. Yale University Press. All rights reserved.
Let me know what you think and I will carry on writing my bits.
Phew!!!!
These are great! We could definitely use one in each of the sections of the presentation now that we've divided it up and discussed it at a bit more length. The Begg quote is appropriate for discussion regarding the mythologisation/fictionalisation of the Ripper, and Perry's point is valid with regard to our conclusion that, ultimately, Ripperology says more about 'us'than it does about 'him'. The Nietzsche point would be ideal for your 'vicarious amorality' thread too. I'm looking up a few suitable images for slides but I don't think we'll need that many really - the whole point is to talk, not just stand there and keep reading things off the screen. I've noticed there are a few good examples of the further fictionalisation of Jack in the computer gaming market, of all places - one of which is where Sherlock Holmes comes up against him!
ReplyDeleteShaz, waxworks and peep shows aswel. Pertain to the voyeuristic element of this. I'd forgotten about them....
ReplyDeleteAnother thought, I know this is not our brief but the list of suspects; Jews, Poles, foreigners generally, Rich mad doctors,errant lovers, all of these show something of the moral bias at the time - they play into their prejeudices.
I've just read a great piece and one of the things it talks about was the number of men pretending to be the Ripper at the time - either because they were weirdo's intent on frightening women or men intent on catching the Ripper. There was a report at the time in the 'Echo' of a Bank of England Director dressing up in day labourers clothes so that he could go into the pubs in Whitechapel with the notion of catching the Ripper!!!!
I have sorted out my bibliography don't forget yours - its probably the same.....