Modern Media and the Birth of the Serial Killer

“One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century”  
–(attributed to) Jack The Ripper, 1888 

      It is certainly possible that Jack the Ripper has given birth to the 20th Century Man (a being coping with being flooded with post-Industrial availability– knowledge and experience brought by easy access, mass resources, transportation and expansion of land– and the fear, strange but seemingly inevitable, in constantly changing cities where the claustrophobic proximity of worlds of people makes them unavoidable yet distanced, alienated and alienating) and the serial killer or, more correctly, the media’s serial killer. No one knows for sure if serial killers existed before The Ripper– it’s doubted but, if true, irrelevant, as we the writer, the readers, and society at large are dealing with the serial killer as formed by the 20th century’s new waves of technology creating the concepts of media and coverage and sensationalism. The serial killer itself in our post-Industrial society ceases to be a human being not based on more complicated thoughts of morality and the deeds of killer making him a “monster,” “animal,” or “demon”; he ceases to be a human because, once in the media he is in himself a concept, an idea, a symbol used in media, in propaganda to illustrate (and carry the burden of) a threat, a danger, a chaos supposedly only the city knows.

      So it is possible Jack the Ripper birthed (or merely illuminated, unearthed) the mentality of 20th century society but it certainly can be turned around and said the 20th century urbanization gave birth to him for the same reasons and with the same effect.

      The 2001 film, From Hell, directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, adapted from Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s graphic novel of the same name, opens with the above quote. The Hughes brothers film street stories. Menace II Society, Dead Presidents: ghetto life, the crimes of the impoverished, the ‘hood– street stories. While initially it may have been surprising to see them herald a project about Victorian London and Jack the Ripper until one realized it was still a street story in someone else’s ‘hood but with the same tragic life of impoverished criminals.

      The focus of this paper, however, is does not include From Hell for simple technical reasons but mention of it must be made for the fact of it being a film about the world’s first covered serial killer, born of– or giving birth to– the city. The focus of the paper is the portrayal of the serial killer in the fiction films M by Fritz Lang and Summer of Sam by Spike Lee.