ariadnes_string (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ariadnes_string) wrote2015-02-06 03:00 pm
ariadnes_string) wrote2015-02-06 03:00 pm
December talking meme: Peaky Blinders
Way back in December, d_generate_girl asked me to talk about Peaky Blinders. Now, in February, I’m finally able to do that (though this got a little long and academic, sorry!).
This is primarily about S2, which I thought was probably better than the first season, less uneven, with less emphasis on a ridiculous star-crossed-lovers plotline, and more interesting stuff.
Here are some of the things that make the love this show.
I suppose it’s fair to say that the show is really held up by the gorgeous scaffolding of Cillian Murphy’s cheekbones. He’s extraordinary in the second season, more beat-up, more dead-eyed, more commanding. He also trots out his special seduction technique several times. This consists of telling a lady he know they’re going to fuck (his word), so just leave the door unlocked for him later. No flirting, no banter, no eyelash fluttering. It works every time.
That said, though, the second season made much better use of its secondary characters, especially Helen McCrory’s Polly. Also, in the (near) absence of the soggy Grace, Tommy’s relationship to Sam Neill’s Chester Campbell was satisfyingly stripped down to the dick-wagging duel it always was. Some of the new characters and storylines worked really well—especially the return of Polly’s lost son Michael, but I also really enjoyed May Carleton; some worked less well—Tom Hardy as Alfie Solomons was wonderful, but his plot arc never went much of anywhere.
Peaky Blinders is a testosterone-fest, but the women are amazing. They usually get the raw end of the deal, it’s true, but they never go down without a fight (and in some cases, firing their guns). Ada didn’t have much to do this season, but she still had some great scenes, as did even very minor female characters like Esme and Lizzie. Even the soundtrack was dominated by female voices this year—the season was practically a tribute to PJ Harvey, who must have featured in almost every episode.
And speaking of that soundtrack! As you probably know, I’m a sucker for shows with flashy soundtracks, case in point, True Detective. But whereas shows like TD use their soundtracks to build a deeper sense of place and context, Peaky Blinders uses glaringly anachronistic music to construct emotional parallels between the present and the past (yes, like a fanvid). I think one either loves this or hates this; I often hate it (Baz Luhrmann, blech) but in this case, I love it. It’s a blunt instrument at times, like the moment in the finale when you realize the show’s been waiting two whole seasons to juxtapose the show’s theme song, Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” to the Red Hand of the Ulster Volunteer Force—but damn if creator Stephen Knight doesn’t earn it.
My other favorite thing about Peaky Blinders, especially S2, is its interest in ethnic strife—as opposed to class tension, though that’s there, too. The Shelbys themselves, of course, are, to some always unspecified degree, gypsies/tinkers/Romani, and the first season had a lot of scenes set in Birmingham’s Chinese community. The second season, though, pushed this further, with the main plotline having to do with Tommy’s attempt to set an Italian gang and a Jewish gang against each other to make his own stake in London. The Irish, of many different regional and political stripes, are always present. The show has little interest in the cultural practices of these groups (unless you count Solomons' parodic seder); instead, it’s interested their strategic coherence and tactical interplay. It all makes a nice change from the upstairs-downstairs but culturally (religiously, racially) homogenous view one usually gets of the British past on TV.
Moreover, while your typical British show coughDowntonAbbeycough is interested in stratification and insularity, Peaky Blinders is interested in mixture and mobility. The gypsy/tinker thing highlights this—a people in permanent exile, without a permanent homeland (when I was in England last year, people were talking about the nearly hysterical anxiety “travelers” still provoke). And if the gypsies weren't mobile enough, S2 also had a lot to say about the canals that link English cities, and the transatlantic shipping that might make the Shelby fortune. S2 also beautifully foregrounded the race course as a scene of heterogeneity and mixture, lingering over Epsom in the finale as a place of gorgeous, troubling, violent, thrilling mingling (rich/poor, black/white/Asian, male/female, criminal/law-abiding, & etc.). This is Tommy Shelby’s world; this is where he thrives.
Good Lord, that was a great hour of television! There was so much to love, from the standoff between Tommy and Alfie, to Tommy and Campbell’s verbal smackdown with “God Save the Queen” playing in the background, to Polly shooting Campbell, to May’s dress.
My favorite thing about the episode, though, was the clear line it drew between Tommy digging his way out of that collapsed tunnel in France (now identified as Schwaben Hohe) and climbing out of the grave the UVF have dug for him at the end of the episode. The parallels are explicit, I think: not only does he have that moment with the UVF man comparing what part of the Somme they survived, but the field where they intend to kill him is as flat and muddy as any Belgium battlefield. It makes so much sense to think of Tommy as someone who is, as he says to Alfie, already dead, or is “between two deaths.” The break in Tommy’s hitherto glacial composure as he realizes he’s survived a second time, with that stripped down version of "All My Tears" playing over it was devastating. It was a flawless scene, I thought, easily the best of the series.
I’m looking forward to another season, though I’m worried it’s going to involve more Grace, and smaltzy love shenanigans. Maybe it’ll be more like Godfather II, though.
And a rec, if you like the kind of musical juxtaposition Peaky Blinders provides: this extraordinary Lawrence of Arabia vid from festivids
d_generate_girl asked me to talk about Peaky Blinders. Now, in February, I’m finally able to do that (though this got a little long and academic, sorry!).This is primarily about S2, which I thought was probably better than the first season, less uneven, with less emphasis on a ridiculous star-crossed-lovers plotline, and more interesting stuff.
Here are some of the things that make the love this show.
I suppose it’s fair to say that the show is really held up by the gorgeous scaffolding of Cillian Murphy’s cheekbones. He’s extraordinary in the second season, more beat-up, more dead-eyed, more commanding. He also trots out his special seduction technique several times. This consists of telling a lady he know they’re going to fuck (his word), so just leave the door unlocked for him later. No flirting, no banter, no eyelash fluttering. It works every time.
That said, though, the second season made much better use of its secondary characters, especially Helen McCrory’s Polly. Also, in the (near) absence of the soggy Grace, Tommy’s relationship to Sam Neill’s Chester Campbell was satisfyingly stripped down to the dick-wagging duel it always was. Some of the new characters and storylines worked really well—especially the return of Polly’s lost son Michael, but I also really enjoyed May Carleton; some worked less well—Tom Hardy as Alfie Solomons was wonderful, but his plot arc never went much of anywhere.
Peaky Blinders is a testosterone-fest, but the women are amazing. They usually get the raw end of the deal, it’s true, but they never go down without a fight (and in some cases, firing their guns). Ada didn’t have much to do this season, but she still had some great scenes, as did even very minor female characters like Esme and Lizzie. Even the soundtrack was dominated by female voices this year—the season was practically a tribute to PJ Harvey, who must have featured in almost every episode.
And speaking of that soundtrack! As you probably know, I’m a sucker for shows with flashy soundtracks, case in point, True Detective. But whereas shows like TD use their soundtracks to build a deeper sense of place and context, Peaky Blinders uses glaringly anachronistic music to construct emotional parallels between the present and the past (yes, like a fanvid). I think one either loves this or hates this; I often hate it (Baz Luhrmann, blech) but in this case, I love it. It’s a blunt instrument at times, like the moment in the finale when you realize the show’s been waiting two whole seasons to juxtapose the show’s theme song, Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” to the Red Hand of the Ulster Volunteer Force—but damn if creator Stephen Knight doesn’t earn it.
My other favorite thing about Peaky Blinders, especially S2, is its interest in ethnic strife—as opposed to class tension, though that’s there, too. The Shelbys themselves, of course, are, to some always unspecified degree, gypsies/tinkers/Romani, and the first season had a lot of scenes set in Birmingham’s Chinese community. The second season, though, pushed this further, with the main plotline having to do with Tommy’s attempt to set an Italian gang and a Jewish gang against each other to make his own stake in London. The Irish, of many different regional and political stripes, are always present. The show has little interest in the cultural practices of these groups (unless you count Solomons' parodic seder); instead, it’s interested their strategic coherence and tactical interplay. It all makes a nice change from the upstairs-downstairs but culturally (religiously, racially) homogenous view one usually gets of the British past on TV.
Moreover, while your typical British show coughDowntonAbbeycough is interested in stratification and insularity, Peaky Blinders is interested in mixture and mobility. The gypsy/tinker thing highlights this—a people in permanent exile, without a permanent homeland (when I was in England last year, people were talking about the nearly hysterical anxiety “travelers” still provoke). And if the gypsies weren't mobile enough, S2 also had a lot to say about the canals that link English cities, and the transatlantic shipping that might make the Shelby fortune. S2 also beautifully foregrounded the race course as a scene of heterogeneity and mixture, lingering over Epsom in the finale as a place of gorgeous, troubling, violent, thrilling mingling (rich/poor, black/white/Asian, male/female, criminal/law-abiding, & etc.). This is Tommy Shelby’s world; this is where he thrives.
Good Lord, that was a great hour of television! There was so much to love, from the standoff between Tommy and Alfie, to Tommy and Campbell’s verbal smackdown with “God Save the Queen” playing in the background, to Polly shooting Campbell, to May’s dress.
My favorite thing about the episode, though, was the clear line it drew between Tommy digging his way out of that collapsed tunnel in France (now identified as Schwaben Hohe) and climbing out of the grave the UVF have dug for him at the end of the episode. The parallels are explicit, I think: not only does he have that moment with the UVF man comparing what part of the Somme they survived, but the field where they intend to kill him is as flat and muddy as any Belgium battlefield. It makes so much sense to think of Tommy as someone who is, as he says to Alfie, already dead, or is “between two deaths.” The break in Tommy’s hitherto glacial composure as he realizes he’s survived a second time, with that stripped down version of "All My Tears" playing over it was devastating. It was a flawless scene, I thought, easily the best of the series.
I’m looking forward to another season, though I’m worried it’s going to involve more Grace, and smaltzy love shenanigans. Maybe it’ll be more like Godfather II, though.
And a rec, if you like the kind of musical juxtaposition Peaky Blinders provides: this extraordinary Lawrence of Arabia vid from festivids
no subject
That's a good point--I didn't make the connection!
The post you linked me to is flocked, so forgive me if I'm repeating stuff you've already talked about:
Unless the British army is very different than the US, Sergeant Major is the highest rank you can attain as an NCO. That's why Tommy is slightly worried when Whathisname Lee promotes him to "Captain" in the finale, and asks them not to shoot him: being a captain would make him a commissioned officer, part of a different class (that's part of the joke--he's sleeping with an officer's widow now), and the potential object of proletarian wrath (like the guy he assassinates).
So Freddie and Arthur wouldn't have been lieutenants, because that's a (commissioned) officer rank, and they're the wrong class (and if they were, they would've outranked Tommy as a Sergeant Major). They might have been sergeants, though.
I also don't think the Engineering Corps had infantry divisions--though maybe? In any case, the 179 is a real company, and the Smallheath Rifles are (as far as I can tell) made up. People who knew each other were allowed to enlist together as a recruitment ploy in the last years of the war, so it's interesting that Freddie, Danny and Tommy ended up in a different division than the other Shelbys/Garrison men. Did they have different skills?
no subject
Based off of this Wikipedia page, Tommy, Danny, and Freddie seem to be one of the 179th's main 3-man teams. I can't find the link, but I recall reading that most tunnelling companies had attached infantry, or at least had access to infantry troops during large-scale engagements. That's not to say that Arthur and John and the rest of the infantry were always with the 179th - Arthur (and his dossier) mention being at Gallipoli, and I'm fairly sure Tommy couldn't have been.
no subject
Though I'm wondering--and I've clearly thought too much about this!--whether Tommy, Freddie and Danny were in a different company because they enlisted earlier than the others--especially John, who must've been so young...
Poor Arthur, being at Gallipoli--no wonder he's a mess! I missed that!
no subject
(So glad I found this, I needed it for Psychic Wolves reasons.)
I think you could be right - that maybe Tommy, Freddie, and Danny enlisted before John. Arthur actually may have enlisted before *everyone* and thus been at Gallipoli, and after that, Tommy would have had the pull to get him reassigned (as the La Boisselle Project site notes that the engineers needed to work with men they trusted and had leeway because of it).
Arthur tells Grace that the stolen cigarettes in their warehouse "smell like Gallipoli", and I only know this because it's one of Em's favorite lines that she pointed out.
no subject
I think you must be right about the order of enlistment. What an amazing line from Arthur!
(did you get the fic draft? no hurry with it, just making sure it didn't go astray)
no subject
no subject