‘The King’s shilling’: How Peaky Blinders uses the experience of war to justify and celebrate toxic masculinity

Abstract

Peaky Blinders (2013–present) is a complex and contradictory study of toxic masculinity as a set of behaviours that are destructive to the self and others. It uses the historical period, post-First World War, to explore the damage war inflicts upon the male psyche, but its sympathies for the men also reveal a darker aspect of this narrow concept of male identity. This does not only emanate from its unashamed glorification of criminality, but also from its representation of some of the deep-rooted yet contradictory beliefs that still exist in postcolonial British national identity. This article explores the role of war as a justification for continued violence, the notion that war (and associated state-sanctioned violence) irreparably damages men, the nostalgia for nationalism through working-class and ethnic identities and the objectification of the main characters’ physical and emotional identities through the ever-present potential for ‘good’ women to repair ‘bed’ men.