This chapter questions conceptions of ‘authenticity’ by looking at how Italian Westerns responded to well-established ethnic images within Hollywood Westerns, which were themselves ‘inauthentic’ in the first place: those of ‘Irishness’. As Italians forged their own interpretation of the Western myth, transposing numerous elements from Hollywood while cutting the genre adrift from its nation-building imperative, it asks, in what form did the Hollywood genre's ubiquitous negotiation with a stereotyped Irish ethnicity survive, and what significance did this hold in this cultural moment? Taking Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker! (Giù la testa, 1971) as a key case study, it charts the labyrinthine intertextual journey through Hollywood's representations of Irish culture on which Leone and his crew embarked The chapter concludes that in the Italian Western, ‘Irishness’ exists as part of a larger signifying structure surrounding a reworked, magnified and updated cinematic imaginary, rather than a purposeful reference to contemporary events in Ireland.
O lado político das fábulas do 'western'
