The Getaway, a love story about a broken couple by Sam Peckinpah

Steve McQueen as a symbol of machismo

There is another interesting passage about ``The Getaway.'' Film critic Christina Newland's essay "Those Blue-eyed Boys" from She Found It At The Movies (Red Press Ltd). She Found It At The Movies is an anthology collection of writings by women about film and sexuality published in the UK in 2020, and Newland also edited the book. Based on the history of women in movies having always been exposed to the sexual gaze of men, this book is an attempt to express that women should be allowed to write about their desires for men. Various female writers write about the movies in which they first became sexually aware, their desires for actors, and the sexual roles of male actors/idols, challenging the history of film criticism based on the male gaze.

Newland mentioned ``The Getaway'' in her essay because it was a movie that strongly stimulated her sexual desire. You can definitely smell the misogyny here. Despite this, she does not hide that her sexual desire was strongly aroused by Steve McQueen, who starred in the film.

“The Getaway” ©2007 Warner Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.

First of all, the actor Steve McQueen is an icon of the macho/cool man. Not only on screen, but also in his A Very Private Affair, he was a very "manly man" who had the ridiculous and foolish idea that a wife should devote herself to her husband at home.

It's not just McQueen. It's also Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood. A Very Private Affair confesses that even though she grimaces at their private behavior, their attitudes toward women, and the strong smell of machismo they exude, she can't deny that she's drawn to them. It's the same as what Roxane Gay confesses in " Bad Feminist " (translated by Nonaka Momo, Aki Shobo), where she hates Robin Thicke and Kanye West's songs (especially the lyrics), but can't stop humming them and swaying to them.

What is the “masculinity” that McQueen emits?