Who is today's Steve McQueen?

[BigFitz]

I don't know. Trying to come up with an actor from today that is as cool as McQueen is almost impossible. The names mentioned so far don't seem to completely satisfy the entire cool quotient when compared to Steve. Christian Bale maybe?

 

[Doublegun]

I think the rose colored glasses of history are clouding this for some. The world isn't the same today, and if McQueen were in his prime today, he'd not be the same guy.

Excellent point. Additionally, there is a generational aspect to the definition of "cool.". When I threw the question out to my wife and daughter, my daughter rattled off the names of 3-4 actors that I don't think are even remotely "cool."

 

[Worf]

Don Draper or to be exact, the actor that plays him. Dissimilar in body type I know but nobody can look at you with that dangerous, sideways "bad ass" glance like he can. Then the next second melt you with a boyish smile. He can handle it.

Worf

 

[Edward]

I think the rose colored glasses of history are clouding this for some. The world isn't the same today, and if McQueen were in his prime today, he'd not be the same guy.

Nor do I think he ever really was all that col himself. Sure, he raced bikes, 'lived it' off screen, but there was also a private man behind what we saw as public. Inevitably that private man would disappoint many. I'm not interested in doing him down as such, but from what little I've read I'm not ready to buy into the "he was teh awesomez" mythology. Great actor, interesting guy.... and human, same as anyone else. [huh]

 

[Fletch]

McQueen wouldn't be McQueen today. Or if he were, he wouldn't be archetypal.

Cool today doesn't have that puckish side that he had. Cool now is pure roleplay, the irony that knows no irony. Watching Steve, you could tell he was too genuine for that.

 

[ButteMT61]

"Cool" men today seem to be a lot less "manly" than back then. Don't know if women (girls) like this more, or it's what we're given in the media.
Guys wearing clothing that's too small, feminine sunglasses (Elton John was cool in the 70s), hyphenating their names...not sure McQueen would be McQueen today...

 

[HoosierDaddy]

No McQueen wouldn't be as cool today...even if that cool was was somewhat an illusion. Today it is more popular to take down any resemblence of hero. We desperately want heros...someone we hope to admire in some sense...yet we manage and perhaps 'desire more' to finally watch and help them fall. Unless...of course they pluck a good guitar...kill themselves with over-indulgence all the while flipping the bird at 'the man'. Martyrs make the bestus heros...especially if their extremes offered a little cleverness in defiance as they then somehow put on angel wings and ascend to an idol heaven where wrongs become rights in the blur of adoration...and that is the coolest of cool.
HD

 

[Fletch]

"Cool" men today seem to be a lot less "manly" than back then.

And manly men are less mature somehow. Today's masculine archetype is actually cruder than it once was - it's younger and not so civilized. I blame wartime and cultural reaction - the lad movement, evo-psych, so-called retrosexuals...

 

[Edward]

"Cool" men today seem to be a lot less "manly" than back then. Don't know if women (girls) like this more, or it's what we're given in the media.
Guys wearing clothing that's too small, feminine sunglasses (Elton John was cool in the 70s), hyphenating their names...not sure McQueen would be McQueen today...

Francis Drake wasn't too butch either. How "manly" the popular heroes of any one era are will always vary - as, of course, will the very notion of what it is to be manly. Me, I tend to the view that anyone in any age who is caught up worrying about whether he is manly or not by very definition can't be.

No McQueen wouldn't be as cool today...even if that cool was was somewhat an illusion. Today it is more popular to take down any resemblence of hero. We desperately want heros...someone we hope to admire in some sense...yet we manage and perhaps 'desire more' to finally watch and help them fall. Unless...of course they pluck a good guitar...kill themselves with over-indulgence all the while flipping the bird at 'the man'. Martyrs make the bestus heros...especially if their extremes offered a little cleverness in defiance as they then somehow put on angel wings and ascend to an idol heaven where wrongs become rights in the blur of adoration...and that is the coolest of cool.
HD

Not really a surprise.... all the very oldest hero myths end with the hero's death - the Greek myths, the Ulster Cycle, you name it. The idea of the perfect hero being someone whose full life cycle we have to examine and mythologise isn't really straying from that.

McQueen did have the edge of an anti-hero, which is much more appealing to me than some supposedly flawless (which usually works out to be a synonym for bland) individual.

 

[Fletch]

Francis Drake wasn't too butch either.

Neither was Erich von Stroheim - without his veneer of Prussian Kultur the man would have been a complete metrosexual (not to mention a hatter's son from Vienna who grew up speaking Yiddish)!

How "manly" the popular heroes of any one era are will always vary - as, of course, will the very notion of what it is to be manly.

The trend to caveman psychology argues that cool is subject to fads, but gender isn't. This is a way of simultaneously denying fads and enshrining them.

 

[ButteMT61]

Francis Drake wasn't too butch either. How "manly" the popular heroes of any one era are will always vary - as, of course, will the very notion of what it is to be manly. Me, I tend to the view that anyone in any age who is caught up worrying about whether he is manly or not by very definition can't be...

Not what I was saying. Guys like McQueen were manly in comparison to today. They were rough around the edges; would fight for a woman's honor; ride motorcycles and horses; wore men's clothing, etc. I don't think they worried about being manly, they just were. Today, it's almost unacceptable to be such a man. It's politically incorrect. After all, women can open the doors for themselves you know! I happen to like that era in some ways. There was a clearer divide between men and women - of course, not all of it was good, and many things have rightly changed for the better.

 

[scottyrocks]

True, when we think of McQueen, we think of all the things we know about him. The problem is finding all the things we deem 'McQueen-cool' in one other actor (person).

The one person I can think of who has not been mentioned here is Jesse James of West Coast Choppers fame. He's got the looks, the attitude, and the whole 'I don't really care what anyone else thinks about what I do' attitude, which his explains his recent move to the midwest.

I know this, like anyone/anything else, is arguable, but I'm throwing it out there.

 

[ButteMT61]

Jesse James? Hell no. The guy treated Sandra Bullock like **** as well as his employees. Nothing about that guy do I idolize. Maybe the bikes. Nothing more. Treating women well is paramount to being a true manly man. No wiggle room in that one. * Of course this counts as we only know so much about anyone. I may have idolized someone(s) that were as bad or worse without knowing. Can't help that!

 

[andymckinnon]

Craig deffinately. maybe Statham [mainly because he does a lot of his own stunts]

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Jesse James? Hell no. The guy treated Sandra Bullock like **** as well as his employees. Nothing about that guy do I idolize. Maybe the bikes. Nothing more. Treating women well is paramount to being a true manly man. No wiggle room in that one. * Of course this counts as we only know so much about anyone. I may have idolized someone(s) that were as bad or worse without knowing. Can't help that!

I think he'd make a fine gang member..if he wasn't so full of himself.
Love the Diablo,tho..and that brass riveted copper bike was pure beauty.

 

[Fletch]

Not what I was saying. Guys like McQueen were manly in comparison to today.

There's a different kind of "manly" today that you may not be paying attention to when focusing on the PC issue. Jesse James is an example: a great big kid who's been running on ego and hormones so long he probably no longer knows he's play-acting.

 

[ButteMT61]

There's a different kind of "manly" today that you may not be paying attention to when focusing on the PC issue. Jesse James is an example: a great big kid who's been running on ego and hormones so long he probably no longer knows he's play-acting.

I ignore guys like him. He's not my idea of manly whatsoever. Those guys have always existed. Never liked them. Never will!

 

[Tomasso]

Treating women well is paramount to being a true manly man. No wiggle room in that one.

http://www.dougiethompson.com/SteveMcQueen_page3.htm

 

[gtdean48]

The Vanilla Gorilla wasn't cool enough to beat Paul Jr in a biker build-off = No way he is McQueen cool!!!!

 

[HoosierDaddy]

The Vanilla Gorilla wasn't cool enough to beat Paul Jr in a biker build-off = No way he is McQueen cool!!!!

Well..really JR doesn't even come close to McQueen cool either...and that winning bike was quite exceptional compared to most that he builds for sure...