Peaky Blinders: love the attitude!

It would be perfectly reasonable to dismiss Peaky Blinders as just another show about gangsters, or thugs.

But I’ve never had much time for bourgeois sensibilities, especially the one about being reasonable on subject matters that are far from reasonable in themselves.  Being reasonable is an ideologically imposed self-censorship, or the infantilization of who we really are as a species, and how we live as subjects to gangsters of all kinds.

What I really love about Peaky Blinders is the attitude.  It’s like watching the ghost of Sid Vicious pissing on the graves of Dallas or Falcon Crest, with trademark swagger and sneer, beer in one hand, cock in the other.

Punk soap opera, underscored with edgy indie rock riffs, and some not-so-indie-anymore classics: Nick Cave, White Stripes, Tom Waits, Arctic Monkeys, PJ Harvey, The Raconteurs, Radiohead, Leonard Cohen, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Black Sabbath, Joy Division, Sinéad O’Connor, and so many more.  What’s not to like about the ambience?

It seems to me the soundtrack is not just ambience, but a deliberate call to a specific demographic: those who were engaged with the (mainly) British music scene of the 1980s and ‘90s.  People who could understand and empathize with the punk ‘fuck you’ attitude of the Shelbys.

If you want to get serious, part of the appeal parallels the Godfather story: a new generation of gangsters muscling their way into ‘respectability’ the same way previous generations have.

Europe has a long history of it: warlords raping, killing, and pillaging their way into ‘noble’ titles, supported by their partner in crime, the Church.  Fast forward to WWI, and it’s just more of the same carnage by the same gangster families, now dressed up in royal fineries and upper class couture.  Enter the underdogs.  Low-brow thugs from Birmingham slums and gypsy heritage, newly trained by their warlords in carnage and mayhem on French battlefields.

I love a good underdog story.  Who doesn’t? 

The best episodes are those with Alfred Solomons (Tom Hardy) and the fascism story arc, with Sam Claflin as a libertine Sir Oswald Mosely, perhaps because they contain less direct violence instead of more complex explanations for it, but these episodes could hardly work without the foundation of the first couple of seasons establishing the boundaries of the violence that has always attended a change of guard in ‘business’.

Merge the whole punk vibe with period costumes, gorgeous sets, wild men and women giving the finger to establishment ‘virtues’ in story arcs with cliffhanger episodes and a sublime supporting cast that included Sam Neill, Annabelle Wallis, Charlie Creed-Miles, Noah Taylor, Tom Hardy, Gaite Jansen, Paddy Considine, Adrien Brody, and many more.  It’s ensemble epic!

In the landscape of tame and de-fanged ‘family’ shows, the Austen-Brontë fetish, and the usual avalanche of American effluent, it stood out just the way punk rock and its aftermath stood out in the dross of 1970s-80s corporate-sponsored pop-rock.

I confess I have much more sympathy for these 1920s–‘30s Birmingham gangsters than the entire recent generation of cut-rate wannabes in bling and gaudy sports clothes.  At least the Peaky Blinders wore suits and fine dresses, real shoes, fob watches, and tasteful jewellery.  But that’s a personal gripe about the vanishing notion of style, buried under the oleaginous slag layers of ‘fashion’.

A last reckoning would have me admit that it’s just good entertainment, even if raw and violent.  Honest about the nature of capitalism, bourgeois society, and family loyalties (and fights) the way ‘clean family fun’ never is.  With characters that are relatable the way few are in other shows, even if only in a sentimental, nostalgic way, remembering some of my own youthful follies and pretensions.