Heroine Masculinity in Peaky Blinders Netflix Series Season 1 Until Season 3
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v14i1.9288Keywords:
Keywords: female masculinity, hegemonic masculinity, Peaky BlindersAbstract
This research explore the representation of feminine masculinity in Peaky Blinders seasons 1-3 that portrays Polly Gray by exploring the characteristics she portrays and how her behavior conflicts or supports patriarchal power dynamics within the Shelby family and society. The study takes a qualitative descriptive approach and interprets selected critical dialogues, interactions and visual scenes. The theory of female masculinity by Halberstam (1998) is the primary theory to explain the social performance of masculinity by women, whereas the theory of hegemonic masculinity by Connell (2005) is the auxiliary theory of interpreting the negotiation of power in the structures dominated by men. The results indicate that Polly is assertive, decisive, strategic, and commands the team, and at the same time, she continues to be a woman. Her conflicts with Tommy, family and business management and her decisive steps, including getting rid of Campbell, demonstrate that feminine masculinity can be a socially intelligible and transformative power. The paper points out that the patriarchal hierarchies can be negotiated and women agency can be both performative and legitimate in cultural texts. Such findings have a role to play in the academic field of gender and media as they can help in the discussion of how female characters are able to exercise power in male-dominated situations as well as provide a more in depth examination of how gender is performed and represented in television fiction.
References
Arianto, S. D. A., & Al Ramadhan, M. F. (2024). The Changing Perceptions of Gender Equality in Media and Popular Culture. Alinea: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra Dan Pengajaran, 4(3), 418–430.
Boudet, A. M. M., Petesch, P., Turk, C., & Thumala, A. (2012). On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries (Washington, DC: The World Bank).
Brinton, M. C. (2023). Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar (Vol. 21). Univ of California Press.
Brown, J. A. (1996). Gender and the Action Heroine: Hardbodies and the" Point of No Return". Cinema Journal, 52–71.
Budgeon, S. (2013). The Dynamics of Gender Hegemony: Femininities, Masculinities and Social Change. Sociology, 48, 317–334. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038513490358
Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd Edition (ed.)). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003116479
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429469237-3
Halberstam, J. (1998). Female Masculinities. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cwb00
Havas, J. E. (2017). Invocations of Feminism: Cultural Value, Gender, and American Quality Television. University of East Anglia.
Kerfoot, D., & Knights, D. (1998). Managing Masculinity in Contemporary Organizational Life: A Managerial Project. Organization, 5(1), 7–26.
Lestari, F. A., & Sugiarti. (2022). Representasi Maskulinitas pada Tokoh Utama dalam Novel Selamat Tinggal Karya Tere Liye. Kajian Linguistik Dan Sastra, 1. https://doi.org/10.23917/kls.v7i2.18995
Melzer, P. (2022). Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought. University of Texas Press.
Morris, E. W., & Ratajczak, K. (2019). Critical Masculinity Studies and Research on Violence Against Women: An Assessment of Past Scholarship and Future Directions. Violence against Women, 25(16), 1980–2006.
Mumby, D. K. (1998). Organizing Men: Power, Discourse, and the Social Construction of Masculinity (s) in the Workplace. Communication Theory, 8(2), 164–183.
Panigrahi, S. S. (2025). Gender, Power, and Prophecy: Reimagining the Feminine in Macbeth. 10(6), 80–89. https://doi.org/10.22161/ijels
Pascoe, G. J. (2015). A Qualitative Textual and Comparative Analysis of the Representation of Masculinity in the Action and Romantic Comedy Genres Gerald James Pascoe, University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 1–26.
Pramudika, A. D. (2015). Visualisasi Maskulinitas Melalui Pengkarakteran Tokoh Dalam Film “5 Cm.” INSTITUT SENI INDONESIA (ISI) SURAKARTA.
Salminen, J. (2022). Gender Narratives of Hollywood Legacy Blockbuster Franchises in the 2010. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Helsinki.
Tasker, Y. (2012). Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. Routledge.
Tyas, N. (2022). Students' Perception on Self-Directed Learning (SDL) in Learning English by Using Youtube Video. IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 10(2), 1307- 1314. doi: https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v10i2.3208
Wu, Michelle E, Nicol, Adelheid A M, & Ralph, Cindy Suurd. (2023). Masculine Conformity and Social Dominance’s Relation with Organizational Culture Change. Armed Forces & Society, 0095327X231178522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X231178522
Violita, V., & Cholsy, H. (2022). Speech Acts Equivalence of Audiovisual Translation on Enola Holmes Netflix Movie Subtitle. IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 10(1), 209-225. doi: https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v10i1.2589
Zahro, F., Afkar, T., & Suwandana, E. (2025). Forms of Female Masculinity Power in the Novel Women Waiting in the Hallway to the Sea by Dian Purnomo. International Journal of Multilingual Education and Applied Linguistics.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Citation Check
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Elmosta Azzam, Hasbi Assidqi, Dadan Rusmana

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See the Effect of Open Access)
