Violent Labour and the Labour of a Violent Genre

This article offers a symptomatic reading of the 2016 Western genre film Hell or High Water, analyzing first the film’s narration of the changes to the oil-based nuclear family in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession. The article finds in this version of the family a key example of grieving for modernity itself, the condition Stephanie LeMeneger defines as ‘petromelancholia’. Next the article scrutinizes the bank robber archetype as it finds purchase as Western hero once again in the labour defeat following the recession. Finally, the article looks to the rhythms of the Western genre form as a way to understand Hannah Appel’s infrastructural time and oil time. Each interpretive level in the article foregrounds the violent labour of the Western genre itself.