Today in class we watched Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), directed by Miike Takashi. This strange film was a fusion of Japanese culture and the American as well as the Spaghetti Western.  The film seemed as if someone had taken a Japanese film and squashed a Western genre on top of it. The characters spoke (at times incomprehensible) English in thick Japanese accents. All the elements of a Western were present, yet they were accompanied by samurai swords, Japanese art and folk law. This was not a Japanese film mimicking a Western, but a Japanese film embracing, it seemed to me, almost parodying a western film. Due to it’s bizarre nature, the film de-familarised the genre of the Western, making it’s tropes and ideology more apparent. Our reading for the week Khoo (2013) had this to say about contemporary Asian Westerns. “They are not the serious Westerns of bygone years, aiming for verisimilitude; rather, they are parodies, pastiches, and kitsch recreations of the American Westerns of the early twentieth century” (p. 85).

As Khoo (2013) mentions, from the classic American Western, grew the Spaghetti Western (Italy), The Curry Western (India), the Sauerkraut Western (West Germany), and of cause the Eastern Western. This is a clear example of how other cultures  have took the a genre from the dominate (Hollywood) and made it their own.

Classic American Western: Winchester ’73 (1950)

Spaghetti Western: A Fist Full of Dollars (1964)

Curry Western: Quick Gun Murugun (2009)

And so forth!