Jack the Ripper is not only a character created by Hollywood with whom many movies, specials, series, and even animations have been created where they have been inspired to create villains, even using the same alias, but this character about a serial killer that guts people is not just fiction, it existed in 1888.
There are many movies based on the character “Jack the Ripper” from stories a little more attached to real history with the purpose of scaring viewers, to stories where the only thing that keeps from the original is the way he kills, even in some stories at the end the character is redeemed. This character has a large fan base around the world, and to this day the story of the London murderer continues to be capitalized on.
Jack the Ripper was a serial killer in London in the year 1888, who is known to have murdered at least 5 women and disemboweled unusually, implying that this person had knowledge about the human body, removing the uterus or kidney, portraying an abhorrence for the entire female gender. The common point that all their victims had is that they were social workers, prostitutes, and at that time (to date really) the deaths or incidents of these workers were not reported and those that were not taken as a serious case, it was common for these women to be used in gang conflicts, being raped and beaten to such an extent that many died, however, the difference of the victims who terrorized London in 1888 was the scandalous manner in which they were found. Although there have been many suspects about the identity of the murderer to date, his identity was never known. Jack the Ripper was never caught.
The fact that he is one of the most wanted criminals in history whose identity is not even known and he got away with it is the same reason that many people idealized him and turned him into this mystical, intelligent, and mysterious character that they sell to him. to the public as a fictional character, of which they have created a whole franchise.
Unlike other serial killers or criminals that have existed throughout history who were also never caught, what makes Jack the Ripper different to have a free pass and not the others? Would it be the fact that their victims were prostitutes, a sector that was considered the same as an object at that time, or would it be the fact that London was going through an economic crisis, the quality of life was bad and there were too many crimes. A city that was the center of all the horror stories and criticisms of society gave place in books and magazines?
The world decided to embrace this criminal as one more fearsome character in the stories that circulated about London at that time and to date.
Nowadays, through the entire repertoire of variations of “Jack the Ripper” that there are and characters based on him, in several stories he redeems himself or causes pity to viewers, as in the case of the character of “Kenny the Ripper” that appears in the famous Japanese animation of” Attack on Titan “. His character is based on Jack and his way of killing as well as the city he comes from and the fact that they could never catch him, even at the end when he dies his character is “redeemed” and they show his life as he spent it in the slums and his sister was a prostitute who died and no one in the place where she worked had noticed until days later since the city did not care. Again, the issue of social workers, neglect, social standards, and the idea of this city where poverty, injustice, and crime are frequent. However, in this version of Jack the deaths of prostitutes are not caused by him but revolve around his life.
Another new variant of Jack the Ripper is the mysterious murderer of the popular Netflix series “The Alienist” where the story takes place in 1896 (a date very close to the real story, 1888) but in New York with an essence very similar to London at that time. The series begins with the police finding a body, which (surprise factor) is dismembered, disfigured and lacks parts of the body just where the uterus should go, as well as part of the kidney, later the victim is identified as a prostitute who “posed as a woman” (she was transgender), a pattern followed by the other victims. Although they are not all social workers or poor, all are transgender women of different ages who die in the same way and are missing parts of the body such as the uterus. Later the plot to try to discover the identity of this murderer is the same data and theories about the original “Jack the Ripper”.
I can affirm that works will continue to appear about this character or based on him since he is a beloved character in the world of suspense as well as one of the favorite villains of Hollywood, even his crimes are projected as works of art for some since each murder had his signature on it as if it were an artist. But if this character had existed last year, it would be a totally different story, even without going so far, if the victims in 1888 had been from high society or men, it would also have had a different course.
