Yojimbo as a genre-film provides a clear example of how genre films are art. In Leo Braudy’s article he writes about how the genre film invokes past forms but also what can be dared in the creative destruction and complication of an old one. Yojimbo is a western in many senses, the numerous “showdown” scenes, the good guy (Sanjuro) vs. the bad guy (Unosuke), the pistol, the good guy saving the “damsel in distress”, etc. But, it’s a western set in Japan. So is it really a western? or a film complicationg the western genre? Can there a Japanese-Western genre, or samurai-western?

In Leo Braudy’s article he writes, “Genre films offend our most common definition of artistic excellence: the uniqueness of the art object, whose value can in part be defined by its desire to be uncased and unfamilar, as much as possible unindebted to any tradition, popular or otherwise.”

Braudy is half-right with this statment, I would argue that our most common definition of artistic excellence is the uniqueness of the art object within convention or some sort of constraint. Meaning something can’t be considered truly artistically excellent without some kind of basis for it to be compared to. True creativity seems to only spring from a mind trying to break out of convention. Therefore convention must exist for art to occur. Someone could show a blue screen for an hour and call it a film and call it art, but it wouldn’t be good. When the only message is uniqueness then there is really no message at all. What makes Yojimbo a great piece of art is the way it intergrates two conventions (western genre and Japanese culture) and blends them together into something unique.

He was looking at the blond’s man outstreched crossed ankles. He said, “You oughn’t wear silk socks with tweeds.”

Madvig raised a leg straight out to look at the ankle. “No? I like the feel of silk.”

“Then lay off the tweeds. Taylor Henry buried?”

This exchange stuck out to me the first time I read it. At first I thought it was meant to provide some type of comic relief. Or maybe to show how nonchalant the two seemed to be about Taylor Henery’s death.

However, fashion plays an important part throughout the story. Clothes are used to describe every character at some point. Fashion played an even important role in the movie, with Ed pointing out Madvig’s fashion mishaps more than once. An metaphor for Madvig’s character flaws perhaps?