Watched a lot of telly today, including several episodes of a Netflix documentary series about the Yorkshire Ripper. A glossy retelling of brutal events in a decidedly dour period of time. This happened to be the period in which I completed my stint at university, followed by the beginning of my career in teaching, in the same part of the world in which the serial killer operated - he was finally caught quite close to where I was living in 1981 - and there was some fascination for me in looking into that world again. Frankly, it struck me as being a pretty ugly place, but perhaps that perception was coloured as a result of the grisly narrative involved. I was struck by the amount of facial hair worn by the men back then, especially the police. (I was happily beardless, by the way.)
The series made much of the misogyny of the time, though I felt this was a bit overstated. The women's movement had been round long enough to draw attention, and rightfully so, to the stereotypes involved in the depiction of a number of the victims and I can recall real compassion in some of the reporting with regard to the fates of all the victims - not just the 'respectable' amongst them. I suppose a large degree of generalising is inevitable in this kind of undertaking, and perhaps is useful in its way. It was certainly good to see the attention paid to the actual victims in the series.
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