The Western as a Genre of Cultural Mobility

Abstract

The Western is, in many respects, the essential American film genre, “a cornerstone of American identity” (Kitses). Yet, despite its distinctly American character, the genre has exerted a fascination all over the world. This contribution examines the Western as a site of transnational cultural exchange and as an illustration of what Stephen Greenblatt calls cultural mobility. In the work of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961), Western elements are evoked, which provide complex comments on the influence of American culture on Japan in the post-WWII years. While Seven Samurai appears to embrace the promise of class eradication as a result of Westernization, its American remake The Magnificent Seven (1960) shows a particular fascination for the decidedly Japanese aspects of the material, namely the idea of a warrior class dissociated from society. The Italian remake of Yojimbo, Fistful of Dollars (1964), shows how the Western can function not only as an external comment on American culture, in its cynical redefinition of the cowboy hero, but also as an amalgam of cultural practices and symbols, reaching from Japanese samurai codes to Christian Catholic redeemer imagery, that through their stylization expose the performativity of culture as such.