How has your chosen media text attracted its audience?

                                                  Peaky Blinders.   


Set in Birmingham in 1919, Peaky Blinders is a crime drama which follows former world war one soldiers who have returned home and formed a criminal gang. Throughout examples we see of it being a highbrow text, showing cultural and intellectual richness with postmodern values, each contributing to attract its audience. To begin the fact that it is set after the first world war would attract a audience who are interested in the culture at that present time, mainly a much older audience.  In addition, the fact that it is set in Birmingham will have more appeal to those in the midlands than those who aren't. This gives the audience a sense of national identity when watching Peaky blinders.

Peaky Blinders has been complimented on its high production values and cinematography. The use of key lighting, slow motion scenes and camera movement helps portray what is going on with more detail. For example when Tommy is sleeping and has a flash back to the war, what we see is a fight scene but the camera movement is very disjointed and the only clear thing we see is someone getting stabbed. This as an audience makes us focus on key things in the scene and tells us about the character in more detail, in this case we learn that Tommy is still suffering from the war with the flashbacks and disturbed sleep. This is favoured by the viewers and is more pleasing to watch. Research suggests that a negotiated audience enjoyed the text, however throughout it lacked originality and often seemed to mirror some of the key narrative themes of board walk empire. This is similarly about American gangsters around the same era perfuming similar acts.

Encoding and decoding is an active theory developed by Stuart Hall which examines the relationship between a text and its audience. This theory can be applied to Peaky Blinders. The characters we see have been encoded in a certain way to appeal to us as an audience. For example Tommy is portrayed as a strong confident male. His attributes are easily shown to us with leader like traits but along side this he has a mental problem from the war and he's an alcoholic. Aunt Polly is protruded as a strong willed, strong minded independent woman. The society Peaky Blinders is set in is quite a mysoginistic one so her persona is very good. She has mother traits to people she involves herself with, and especially in comparison to the other female characters as they are shown to us as quite vulnerable. Chief inspector Campbell is also another strong male. However he is a rival to Tommy. The fact that he's Irish also brings up issues of the Irish republican army which was a big deal at that time. As an active audience, decoding these characters allows us to engage with the texts and allows us to find out their personality and finding out why they're this way appeals to us and helps us plot what will happen to them.