Cowboys and Indians: Transnational Borrowings in the Indian Masala Western

This chapter investigates the cultural politics of transnational borrowings through an analysis of the ‘Masala Western’ — a cycle of Indian films that began in the early 1970s which borrowed and recombined tropes from American Westerns, Italian Westerns, Japanese sword films, and the South Asian ‘dacoit’ (bandit) films, among other inflences. While the genre is more often referred to as the ‘Curry Western’, Masala — the South Asian term for spice mix — more clearly evokes the cultural mixing and blending at the heart of this phenomenon. The chapter will examine the Masala Western utilising a memetic model of cultural hybridization.