The fog of Victorian London settles on Alex and Andrea as they dive into “Ripperology”: the facts, fiction and shadow cast by Jack the Ripper over our culture. By examining how the figure is depicted in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger and The Hughes Brothers’ From Hell, we can begin to untangle the history of more than one problematic man involved in creating their own mythology.

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REQUIRED READING

The Lodger: A Story of London Fog. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1927.

From Hell. Dir. The Hughes Brothers, 2001.

EXTRA CREDIT

The Lodger. Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novella.

 

From Hell. Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s iconic graphic novel.

 

London: A Biography. Peter Ackroyd’s seminal book on a sprawling city with an even bigger history.

 

The “Lodger Evil” and the Transformation of Progressive Housing Reform, 1890–1930. An in-depth look at the lodging house boom of the turn of the century.

 

Rule, Britannia!: The Biopic and British National Identity. An examination of how popular British figures have shaped the country’s film output.

 

“Murder for a Penny: Jack the Ripper and the Structural Impact of Sensational Reporting” by A. Luxx Mishou – the history of sensational reporting and its role in Jack’s reign of terror.

 

“Jack the Ripper, the dialectic of enlightenment and the search for spiritual deliverance in White Chappell” by Alex Murray – how Jack contributed to Horkheimer and Adorno’s dialectic of enlightenment.

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