Stephen Knight’s elaborate Masonic theory for the infamous Whitechapel murders of 1888, first presented in his book of the same name in 1976, has since become a figure of ridicule in the world of professional ‘ripperology’, despite offering the most concise and approachable explanation for a riddle that still befuddles countless policemen, historians, psychoanalysts and armchair sleuths. The scant regard which his theory is given by contemporary writers and critics perhaps indicates the depths to which modern thinking has plummeted: the notions that Knight puts forward seem so abhorrent to certain commentators, who themselves it must be said have a vested interest in the perpetuation of certain Ripper myths, that they would rather support alternative theories that have little credence than admit the Victorian Establishment, and certain well-respected personages from that period, were cruel and bigoted tyrants that advocated time and again unacceptably brutal methods of social and political suppression.

Recent high-profile events, and the reaction to them by the mass audio visual media, likewise betray a growing sense of what celebrity skeptic Richard Dawkins has dubbed “the enemies of reason”. Dawkins uses this to (quite rightly) argue against the growing coverage given to, and the subsequent dependency on, irrational superstition not only by the media but in various health services and entertainment industries – exemplified on film and television by the likes of The Fourth Kind (2009; dir. Olatunde Osunsanmi) or 6ixth Sense with Colin Fry (2002-Present) – but his undeniably accurate assumptions can also be applied to the inability or refusal of media practitioners and theorists to adequately question not only a specific issue but their place within its wider context – suggesting through an alarming willingness to accept things at face value, the even more disturbing lack of introspection and awareness on the part of modern media professionals when dealing with current social, cultural or political topics. We can add to the blanket disregard for Knight’s unequivocally grounded theory, the open hostility many programmes and programme makers display for racial equality, feminism and ecology, and the growing trend of populist documentaries that support a frightening Chrisitan subtext (an example of which, and the subsequent debate it arose, can be found here).

To deny the multitude of perspectives available of the human condition is to deny and inhibit the development of humankind as a whole, and in modern media examples, many of which are heavily didactic and disgustingly biased, we can see the suppression of truth and the encouragement of moral standpoints that are intolerant toward alternative lifestyles and mindsets. In Stephen Knight’s theory, with its suggestions as to the ingrained bigotry and egoism of those in power at the time of the Whitechapel murders, we have a parallel to the modern hierarchical structure of the mass audio visual media, which likewise seeks to obliterate any threat to its supremacy. Only through application of egalitarian production processes – examples of which we have suggested here and here – can practitioners and theorists attempt to build relevant material that, instead of dictating and directing, suggests and encourages its audience, allowing them important access to critical debate – an essential media process that is criminally inhibited by state-sponsored media education and commercially-minded film and television production.

Again, we must argue that change should be implemented at the earliest, most basic level of education in order to dissuade the next generation of media professionals from committing the same anti-intelligence sins we are witness to time and again in today’s media climate.

Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution at the IMDB