Strangers in town: On discourses of Asianness in the Italian Western

This article characterizes the Italian Western as an innate hybrid genre that has to be seen as constituted by decentralized modes of production, mobility of film-makers and fluid exhibition networks. Italian Westerns travel across national boundaries, working as a junction in a global network of cultural exchange. Against this theoretical backdrop of transnationalism, several key films are discussed, each starring an Asian protagonist or antagonist. As only two of the films in question figure as Italian Asian co-productions, the representation of ‘eastern’ identity through ‘western’ images is of particular interest. The article poses the question if there is a merging of the national and the generic or simply an incorporation of the Other’s discourse at work: How are ‘eastern’ genres like the Japanese sword film and the Hong Kong martial arts movie fused with the Italian Western? To answer this question, the article draws on textual analysis that never loses sight of overdetermining contextual factors. Thus, the films are seen to reflect their transnational modes of production, being just as hybrid as the global imaginary giving rise to them. Competing subject positions come into view, showing that the texts and their discourses of ‘Asianness’ are deeply open to ambivalence.