(Spoilers for “The Gentlemen” series.)
I’ve been watching the new Netflix series, “The Gentlemen,” this week. I loved it. I mostly watched it for Theo James (for the obvious reasons), and he’s wonderful as Eddie Horniman. Very stoic and understated.
But the real star of the show is Kaya Scodelario, playing Susie Glass. Scodelario stands up to James both in terms of stoicism and acting chops. She doesn’t completely steal scenes from him but I was watching her more than James in their scenes together. She’s eye-catching, no question, wearing flashy velvet and diamanté in glowing colors, red lips blazing, her eyeliner razor sharp. But that’s not what got my attention so often. She enters almost every scene with her chin up like she’s giving the other characters a target to hit. And she takes a lot of hits, barely ever flinching.
As characters, Susie Glass and Eddie Horniman are in similar positions. Susie’s running her father’s criminal empire while he’s serving a dime in prison. Eddie’s inherited his father’s estate, rather unexpectedly since he’s the second son. In doing so, he’s inherited his older brother’s debts as well as the, ahem, “alternative” farm that Susie’s family is growing under the dairy. Neither Susie nor Eddie seem to want the responsibilities they’ve taken on, but they’re not shirkers. They both rise to every occasion and find that running a criminal empire is something they’re rather good at, separately and togther.
Susie and Eddie also have similar parental pressures on them. Susie’s father dictates every element of how Susie runs his business. He rarely takes Susie’s suggestions into account, and when things take a turn for the seriously worse in Episode 6, he tells her to go home and put her feet up while he takes care of business. Susie has been supremely competent to this point. She has a reputation in the criminal underworld of being so fair and true to her word that just dropping her name gets Eddie out of some very sticky situations. Although she says she makes “a point of not getting shot at,” when she comes under fire repeatedly (including at machete-point), she handles it. But her father sidelines her when the going gets tough and Susie defers to her father right to the end.
As a woman who runs her own business, this kind of thing easily enrages me. I see it so often in my day job – the questioning of women’s competence despite them having greater qualifications and experience than their male peers, the claim that a businesswoman is reacting “emotionally” instead of logically (with the implication that a woman’s emotional response cannot be trusted). It triggered me the same way that “Sicario” enraged me, so I was going to rant about it.
But I think it’s a mistake to conflate “The Gentlemen” with “Sicario.”
Thinking more about it, looking closely at Susie Glass’s character, and pondering why a show titled “The Gentleman” would revolve around a woman wrestling for control of her father’s criminal empire, I realised “The Gentlemen” isn’t a misogynistic narrative. Susie’s father does sideline and undermine her. But no moreso than Eddie’s aristocratic mother subverts him. Eddie’s had a ridiculous mess dumped on him – a mess his mother knew about but doesn’t even clue him in on. Although his mother throws Eddie a couple of bones through the series (in very much the same manner as Susie’s father), she mostly leaves him to muddle through the mess on his own, while casting a disapproving eye over his efforts. She’s the one who constantly pressures Eddie to get out of business with Susie, despite the fact that this business saved her husband’s estate and has supported her resulting lifestyle. Even in the face of Eddie not just successfully navigating the business but clearly enjoying himself, she’s still telling him to get out until he finally sucks her into his scheme.
Interestingly, neither Susie nor Eddie achieve independence. They take out their enemies together, but they’re not free of parental control. It’s the terms that have been renegotiated. They’re no longer running the criminal empire for their parents’ benefit. They’re running it for themselves. It may be a limited kind of agency, but for adult children of manipulative parents, it might be the best we can get while still maintaining a friendship with our families. I find that a much more nuanced, resonant, and personally appealing, story than “Sicario.”
E J Frost 