Abstract
I have argued that in films about Jack the Ripper it is the Ripper himself who is the most powerful screen presence. In the screen hierarchy of Ripper films the Ripper is first, then the detective and last the victims, the women who in the words of Clive Bloom ‘exist to scream and die’. This may appear callous but from a narrative perspective this is what the victims need to do to drive the film forward, especially in serial-killer narratives when for the audience the point is often to get to the next murder. In this way I argue that the victim’s murders can be compared to the structure of porn films, the murder is the ‘money shot’ and this is the place that the audience need to be taken to as soon as possible. This is why for the majority of Ripper films the victims only appear briefly, with no back story and are dead within seconds of appearing on screen.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Bloom, 260.
- 2.
Dyer, ‘Kill and Kill Again’, 116.
- 3.
Creed, Phallic Panic, 196.
- 4.
Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 28.
- 5.
Freud, The Ego and the Id, 28.
- 6.
Freud, The Ego and the Id, 144.
- 7.
Louise Brooks Luluin Hollywood (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 2000) 104.
- 8.
Freud, The Ego and the Id, 30.
- 9.
Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 112.
- 10.
Nead, 174.
- 11.
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (London: Penguin, 2003), 127.
- 12.
Begg. (2009), 51.
- 13.
Gaskell, 236.
- 14.
Brooks (2000), 104.
- 15.
Kerry Powell, Women and Victorian Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 35.
- 16.
Peter Bailey, ‘Parasexuality and Glamour: The Victorian Barmaid as Cultural Prototype’, Gender and History 2, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 162.
- 17.
Mulvey, 25.
- 18.
Bram Djikstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin de Siecle Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 357.
- 19.
Deborah Epstein Nord, Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation and the City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 4.
- 20.
Freud, The Uncanny, 70.
- 21.
Mulvey, 22.
- 22.
Mulvey, 22.
- 23.
Christine Gledhill, ‘Pleasurable Negotiations’, in Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1988), 167.
- 24.
Mank, 250.
- 25.
Bloom, 261.
- 26.
Sandra L. Gilman, ‘Who Kills Whores? I do, says Jack: Race and Gender in Victorian London’, in Jack the Ripper: Media Culture History, eds. Warwick and Willis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 268.
- 27.
David Wilson, A History of British Serial Killing (London: Sphere, 2009), 137.
- 28.
Dyer, ‘Kill and Kill Again’, 116.
- 29.
Freud, The Uncanny, 144.
- 30.
Freud, The Uncanny, 151.
- 31.
Freud, The Uncanny, 142.
- 32.
Freud, The Uncanny, 132.
- 33.
Bloom, 262.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, C. (2016). The Victims. In: Jack the Ripper in Film and Culture. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59999-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59999-5_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59998-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59999-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)