Drugs and Suicide: “Peaky Blinders”
Peaky Blinders is a Netflix original series following a family of small-time gangsters in Birmingham post World War 1. This gang is run by the Shelby family, composed of 3 older brothers, Thomas, Arthur, John, Aunt Polly, and the younger siblings Ada and Finn. Thomas acts as the brains while he and his brothers deal with the dirty work. Pol and Ada are voices of reason; when the boys veer too far in one direction, the girls are there to correct them, or at least attempt to. Finn is too young to partake in the family business and is obscured until later in the story. The family dynamic is complicated and multifaceted. An easy analogy is a basketball team, and Thomas is like the coach. He knows how to work personalities and stroke egos. He manipulates those around him as he sees fit, all for the better of the team. Arthur and John are the frontcourt, getting down low and doing the dirty work only the big boys can do, yet rely on the guards to dish them the ball. Ada and Polly are the backcourt, keeping the boys on track and putting them in a position to succeed, but always ready to knock down the big shot. Everyone is essential for the success of the team. If one person is slacking off or makes a mistake, they become vulnerable. And vulnerability seems to be all too common for the Shelby’s.
Trauma and mental health are front and center in Peaky Blinders. Almost every character is written with these central themes in mind, whether it’s the men who fought in the war dealing with PTSD, women, and children adapting to life without a man in the house or men who avoided the fight altogether. Every character evokes trauma in one way or another. And just like in real life, people have different means of processing and dealing with trauma. Drugs, lust, violence, power, and revenge. All means to an end of relief, in a period where mental health was not close to what it is today, when the stigma around masculinity was still powerfully prevalent. During an argument with Thomas’s current wife, Lizzie, Tommy says, “They haven’t come up with the words” to describe his trauma. The men avoid showing weakness around others, only dealing with their feelings in private to avoid the shame that might follow. Neither of the brothers speaks to a psychologist despite carrying such a burden in trauma and responsibility.
Tommy and Arthur have very similar trauma but different ways of coping. They both served in France, where they contracted their PTSD, and now live lives that force them to commit violent acts, which they accept begrudgingly. There have been many times the brothers have had to kill for various reasons. When confronting a snitch in their ranks named Mickey, Arthur flinches away, crying when Tommy shoots Mickey, pleading to his brother for reassurance as he claims to be “sinking.” In a separate conflict, the brothers flipped a coin to decide who would bear another killing on their conscience. After Tom has to kill his respected affiliate Alfie Solomons, he is tasked with putting down his son’s terminally ill horse. While giving a speech at the stead’s burial, he begins to cry as he sees flashbacks of the act, indicating the building stress and trauma are affecting him to such a degree that killing a human and killing a horse bear equal weight on his conscience.
Both of the Brothers also share suicidal tendencies passed down genetically, as their uncle Charlie says their grandfather and mother went by suicide. Throughout the show, Thomas has made many remarks about being better off dead, and season 5 ends with a defeated and hallucinating Tommy holding a gun to his head screaming like a mad dog. Arthur tried to hang himself to no avail after his father swindled him out of a lump sum of cash with a promise on a significant “investment.”
In times of crisis, the rest of the family always supports the two mentally and emotionally. But their primary source of relief is women and drugs. In the beginning and after Grace’s death, Tommy shows a frequent use of opium. That being the only thing that numbs the sounds of shovels striking earth. But after he meets and starts a romantic relationship with Grace, his dependency stops. Thomas claims that when he is with her, he no longer hears the digging. She provides a type of relief Tommy has never experienced before and begins to motivate Tommy to cease and dissolve the company’s illegal parts. Tom even makes an effort to ban guns in the house, trying to detach himself from his criminal life as much as possible.
After her death, his trauma fixates on Grace. He hallucinates her every time he takes opium and frequents it even more after finding this out. Every woman he embraces after is motivated by Tom trying to attain that same relief in some capacity, whether emotional or physical. Tommy has processed and accepted the loss of his second love on the surface, but in reality, there’s something deep down that refuses to let go.
Arthur finds relief through drinking and fighting, true to his animalistic nature, which he tries so hard to detach himself from. Eventually, he meets Linda and finds God, leading to him quitting drugs and alcohol, well, at least for a short stint. In times of need, he always defers to her. At one point, Linda convinces Arthur she speaks the word of God. But eventually, Linda has enough of the Shelby lifestyle and Arthur’s inability to take charge of the family and goes to live with some quaker friends for some distance. In the meantime, his paranoia and stress run rampant. He acts almost like a drug addict on withdrawal as if he can’t deal with life without his wife’s support. When Arthur finds out that she’s been staying with a male friend, he loses all common sense, entering a blind rage in typical Arthur fashion, beating the Quaker man so severely his face is deformed. All while having a mental breakdown, leading to Arthur crying over the broken man’s body, shouting, “I’m a good man, but these hands are of the devil.”
Religion also seems to be a way of rationalizing murder for Arthur, helping to ease the guilt from his actions. After Finn professes his cowardice to pull the trigger on a hostile Italian, Arthur’s advice is, “God decides who lives and dies regardless of who pulls the trigger.”
Almost every character is thematically sound in their starting state, progression, and the actions they take. But this is particularly true for the eldest two brothers. The morally grey lives the Shelby’s live are financially romanticized while demonizing the dirty work behind the scenes, all to emphasize the mental burden it has on the entire family. In a way, Peaky Blinders is a reminder to take mental health and suicide seriously, something crucial in such a trying time when people are often on edge about the state of the world. It’s okay to talk to people and to rely on others. No person should carry their burden themselves. If Tommy Shelby can’t do it, chances are you can’t either.
