Irvine Valley College:  Online Literature Study of the School of Humanities and Languages

Literature 110 - Popular Literature

Spring 2013 - Ticket #62740  // Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, MFA, Instructor

Unit 4c:  Enduring Crimes

The Lodger, Marie Belloc Lowndes

Clear-cut Value System

James Stewart and Kim Novak in *Vertigo*

Surprisingly enough, a clear-cut value system is a regular feature of the Psycholoigcal Thriller.  It doesn't really appear as a value system - it appears as a very important backdrop:  what's Normal.  The establishment of normality is a key element in this category of Crime Fiction because the shifting and treacherous action in the story, the presence of evil unseen, draws all of our assumptions about reality into question.  

Much of the time in this kind of thriller, the bounds of "normal" in the exterior sense have already been left behind.  In *Rosemary's Baby*, the couple have moved into a "bad" building - young couples in urban areas should rightly live in a good building.  In *Vertigo*, Scotty was normal when he was working his regular job, but after he has vertigo, he is already operating in an abnormal environment.  And, in *The Lodger*, the Buntings have been in service - and that is where servants "belong." [In England at that time, many household retainers died in service.]  For the Buntings to "try to make a go of the lodging-house" puts them at risk.  

While the establishment of the "now not normal" situation seems to be an external part of the plot, it also holds important and subtle clues about value systems.  What constitutes good houses, good servants, and good mental health are set, in these stories, against the darkness of the psychological terror!

Jack the Ripper (Lloyd Cregar, *The Lodger* 1944)

Mythological and Folk Referents

It's a strange thing, but one might speculate that crimes and murders and so forth become much more the focus of urban, modern society than they seem to have been in more primitive, agrarian society.  But maybe this is a factor of the unknowability of the criminal.  In classic myth and folk tales, the identity of the murderer is usually not in question.  When communities were small and everyone knew each other, there was far less chance that some stranger could intrude into the landscape without being noticed and examined.  Of course there was murder, and psychological terror, and even supernatural fear - all the time - but the idea of a string of killings in a neighborhood being committed by someone that no one recognized is essentially an urban/modern phenomenon.  Perhaps one of the closest ties of Jack the Ripper to folk-lore is the relationship to Mack the Knife.  From Wikipedia on Mack the Knife:  

Marilyn Manson as Mack the Knife

Mack the Knife or The Ballad of Mack the Knife, originally Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928. The song has become a popular standard.

[off topic aside - one of the most interesting versions of the *Mack the Knive* song was recorded by Jimmie Dean Gilmore and was the closing sound track in the movie, *The Prophet* <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICRbinSuwcU>

A moritat (from mori meaning "deadly" and tat meaning "deed") is a medieval version of the murder ballad performed by strolling minstrels. In The Threepenny Opera, the moritat singer with his street organ introduces and closes the drama with the tale of the deadly Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife, a character based on the dashing highwayman Macheath in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. The Brecht-Weill version of the character was far more cruel and sinister, and has been transformed into a modern anti-hero.

The opera opens with the moritat singer comparing Macheath (unfavorably) with a shark, and then telling tales of his robberies, murders, rapes, and arson.

There was a time when Mack the Knife was actually the theme for Ronald McDonald commercials (sorry, that was a while back and I can't find a picture of Mac swinging on the Moon) - and I guess that is about as much a part of folk culture as a concept can be!  I don't recall Jack the Ripper otherwise being big in commercials - but not counting it out!

In the case of *The Lodger* we have the creation of a new folk image that has its own life and unique identity.  Jack the Ripper is now a folk element of modern times - old enough now to have all the patina and quaintness of any ancient tale!

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Crime: 

while "detective" fiction keeps its discovery process right in the Point of View of the Detective, Crime Fiction, an umbrella category for all fiction that involves crime,  often tells the story from a different point of view with perhaps an unusual kind of narrator (innocent bystander, curious reporter, would-be-victim).  Some of our detective writers (such as P.D. James) also write other kinds of Crime Fiction.  But the genre has a wide variety of approaches.

Marie Belloc Lowndes, of course, is one writer we will become familiar with as we follow her treatment of Jack the Ripper - her fiction could be included in a sub-category of "psychological thriller," as well.

but you also might like to sample:

Edgar Allen Poe:  Poe's classic tales of live incarceration and mystery are full of criminal (and psychological) detail!

A list of the 100 best mystery writers will give you an idea of the roll call of these writers!  From The Mystery Writers of America.