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Bad Jokes, Bad English, Good Copy: Sukiyaki Western Django, or How the West Was Won

Abstract Miike Takashi’s Sukiyaki Western Django is a contemporary remake of Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti Western Django. In this updated Japanese version all of the characters speak English and there is a notable cameo appearance by Quentin Tarantino that references the continuous series of filmic exchanges that have taken place between Asia and the West, most notably in the context of action cinema. Rather than conceiving of the various movements and exchanges between the two films (and their predecessors) in terms of the search for an “original” or for the conceptualisation of good or bad copies, this paper focuses on the question of genre and what it can bring to a discussion of cross-cultural value in cinema. In particular, the paper explores what the recurring turn to Westerns in Asia reveals about the search for new frontiers of value and aesthetics in global cinema. From the serious to the self-conscious to the downright “bad” (and bad-ass) Western, Sukiyaki Western Django is a notable recent example of how the “Asian Western” both localises and globalises a peculiarly American genre, and at once de-values and re-values the “original”.