Historicizing Masculinities in the TV Show Peaky Blinders

Peaky Blinders is a British TV show focused on gang culture in the 1920s and 30s in Birmingham, England. It follows the Shelby family, particularly the middle brother Thomas Shelby, on their quest to achieve power in their community through whatever means necessary. It is a really interesting visual depiction of historicized masculinities. The show depicts masculinity at this time as extremely violent, sexist, and emotionally repressed. But it also examines the influences of politics on masculinity at this time. For example, many of the characters experience PTSD from their time fighting in WWI. The show depicts this as an honest struggle that many men are going through, but it also suggests that if a man's PTSD is too visible he is not considered very masculine. Conversely, men who did not fight in WWI are considered even less manly, and must work extra hard to prove their masculinity. There are also multiple masculinities interacting in the show that are influenced by social status, class, and political beliefs. There are communist men who view all non-communists as elitist and supportive of social hierarchy, there are policemen who generalize all people in poverty as communists and therefore dirty criminals, there are gang members who are generally portrayed sympathetically but are using whatever means necessary to gain power, the list goes on. The show is weak in the area of racialized masculinities but there are a couple of characters that provide insight into what it might have been like to be a black man during this time. In this way the show historicizes changing and intersecting masculinities within the historical and geographical context of post-WWI Birmingham England.