I’m a writer. And several years ago, I was doing some research for a book chapter on Psycho. Anyway, some college students had asked me a question about the similarities between a Faulkner story and Psycho. There was no question that the similarities were there, and there was also no question that both Faulkner and Hitchcock had worked in Hollywood in the 1940s. So I got curious and decided to explore that angle.

Well, there wasn’t any connection. The similarities were coincidental—sort of a convergence between cultural trends and the necessities of storytelling. However, in the course of my investigations, I did some reading from a book about the psychology of murder, published in 1959—shortly before Hitchcock made his movie. I wanted to know what that book had to say about Ed Gein, since Bloch loosely based Norman Bates upon Gein.

The book had an entire chapter on Gein. But I didn’t stop there. I read about nearly every infamous murderer catalogued in that book. Along the way, of course, I came upon Jack the Ripper. When I read about the injuries he inflicted on his victims, I wondered: “Why didn’t I know about this? Why did I only know that he cut their throats but never knew that he also disembowelled them?”

The answer was obvious: nearly my entire source of information about the Ripper was from television and movies (most of which I’d seen on television). Pop culture, for the most part, had sanitized and softened the Ripper. So I became curious about how the culture interprets Jack the Ripper–not just now, but ever since the Autumn of 1888.

Maybe I’ll blog about various trends in the coming days. But for now, I’ll just settle on the victims. Okay, I’m assuming that anybody reading this has some kind of interest in Jack the Ripper and/or Ripper movies. So tell me: what do you know about the victims? You probably know their occupation, right? I think nearly everybody knows that. Do you know the average age of the victims or their names? Unless you’re a hardcore Ripperologist (or serious fan of the Johnny Depp From Hell movie), probably not.

I gave a questionnaire to a film club a few years ago, and most people thought that the victims were young and beautiful. So did I before I began to study the case. I do have a theory on why many people think that. Many of us have gotten our impressions of the case from pop culture. And, of course, pop culture knows that beautiful young women sell product a whole lot better than decrepit middle-aged alcoholic prostitutes do. Hence, the first “distorted” presentation of the victims in cinema.

Now, I’m not complaining about the distortion. I just find it interesting… just as I find it interesting that the Ripper can be used in supernatural horror movies, science fiction, and virtually anything else that writers can dream up. Every character inspired by Ed Gein–whether it’s Norman Bates, Leatherface, or Buffalo Bill–is a character planted at least marginally in the real world. Okay, Texas Chainsaw is kind of a surreal world, but there’s nothing supernatural about it.

Why does the Ripper get to be immortal (or whatever) and Gein-based characters do not? Well, I have a theory about that too.

I think I’ll save it, though, for tomorrow.