On Jack the Ripper
“Hey guys, you know that Jack the Ripper guy? The serial killer who brutally murder a bunch of women in 1888? Let’s try to make him a cultural icon! Maybe even sympathetic!”
So, we have five woman brutally murdered and mutilated for, essentially, their sex lives.* We have an additional six women who were also brutally murdered and mutilated either by the same man, or by copycat killers. And how do we approach it? Do we approach it as “this is a sick bastard”? No we approach it as “But why? What were his reasons? What happened to him? What was his justifications?” And most of these portrayals? Are apologists. Try to add in “no no no…he had OTHER reasons! Maybe good ones!” SFF has him get abducted by aliens or fall into another world or get transported through time or whatever, and then he has REGRETS and suddenly, he’s sympathetic. Almost every time I come across mentions of Jack the Ripper, the portrayal is either apologist, or trying to make him into some kind of antihero.
And just…why don’t people have more of a problem with this? I don’t stumble across him so much that I feel like I’m tripping over him, but every time something mentions him, I end up having to step away for a couple days** to get over my irritation, because he’s almost never a sick bastard who murdered and mutilated women, he’s always somehow sympathetic or justified or seeking redemption/redeemed and somehow, I just have problems with that kind of celebration of and fascination with misogyny. It doesn’t help that I’m pretty sure that if he murdered men or housewives, no one would care. I mean, if it was that, or we knew for a fact who he was, he'd probably just be another serial killer with some books in the true crime section of the bookstore, instead of this huge phenomenon.
*As far as we know.
**It’s like when I was reading Busman’s Honeymoon and the Dowager Duchess-a fabulous character-commented that she thought Jane had treated Rochester badly. Because, you know, dumping a guy who locked his wife in the attic and attempted to trick his much younger employee into helping him commit bigamy is totally uncalled for. I maintain that the problem is that she ever looked back.
So, we have five woman brutally murdered and mutilated for, essentially, their sex lives.* We have an additional six women who were also brutally murdered and mutilated either by the same man, or by copycat killers. And how do we approach it? Do we approach it as “this is a sick bastard”? No we approach it as “But why? What were his reasons? What happened to him? What was his justifications?” And most of these portrayals? Are apologists. Try to add in “no no no…he had OTHER reasons! Maybe good ones!” SFF has him get abducted by aliens or fall into another world or get transported through time or whatever, and then he has REGRETS and suddenly, he’s sympathetic. Almost every time I come across mentions of Jack the Ripper, the portrayal is either apologist, or trying to make him into some kind of antihero.
And just…why don’t people have more of a problem with this? I don’t stumble across him so much that I feel like I’m tripping over him, but every time something mentions him, I end up having to step away for a couple days** to get over my irritation, because he’s almost never a sick bastard who murdered and mutilated women, he’s always somehow sympathetic or justified or seeking redemption/redeemed and somehow, I just have problems with that kind of celebration of and fascination with misogyny. It doesn’t help that I’m pretty sure that if he murdered men or housewives, no one would care. I mean, if it was that, or we knew for a fact who he was, he'd probably just be another serial killer with some books in the true crime section of the bookstore, instead of this huge phenomenon.
*As far as we know.
**It’s like when I was reading Busman’s Honeymoon and the Dowager Duchess-a fabulous character-commented that she thought Jane had treated Rochester badly. Because, you know, dumping a guy who locked his wife in the attic and attempted to trick his much younger employee into helping him commit bigamy is totally uncalled for. I maintain that the problem is that she ever looked back.