Transnational Allegory/Transnational History: Se sei vivo spara/Django Kill … If You Live, Shoot!

This article explores how films can offer diverse international audiences a transnational allegory that speaks to their shared experiences of a global historical situation, such as the Cold War. Giulio Questi's bizarre western Se sei vivo spara/Django Kill … If You Live, Shoot! (1967) is taken as a case study. This film provides a suggestive example of how spaghetti westerns, which are renowned for circulating internationally during the Cold War, offered narratives that resonated with audiences experiencing political turmoil and violent conflict during this historical period. Drawing on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's idea of `multitude', Django Kill is seen to provide a transnational form of history for geographically dispersed people around the world (even if they do not share the common cultural affinities that characterise, say, a diaspora), whose lives are influenced by similar ideological and material conditions.