Illyana Yates
Bill Gun’s statement that, “heterosexuality and homosexuality are myths and that racial identity is also fluid and constantly changing” resonates throughout the entirety of Ganja and Hess, and also makes me feel a bit better about getting muddled up in all of my thoughts because there are no clear definitions in this film (43). Rather than an idea of ‘twoness’ it seems as though Ganja and Hess covers a full spectrum of social identities that aren’t a clear binary. There are no white people in this movie (except for the guy in the mask and I have no idea what that was about) unlike many blaxploitation films and so there are no clear Eurocentric villains that Ganja and Hess are fighting against. Rather they are representative of the Other in horror conventions through their African vampirism and racial identity, but they are also representing the Europeanized norm. One of the biggest spectrums in the
Ganja and Hess
Bill Gunn
1973
film, the villain and the victim. Hess this is explored as the African American Christian church relinquishes him of his African vampirism, which stops the violence that he inflicts on other people in the black community but at the same time makes him a victim as he kills himself. I think this ending makes this film all the more confusing, am I happy for Hess in the end? Am I happy for Ganja for being alive and solely in the powerful position now? Or am I just glad that I got to view a beautiful film that made my head spin with thoughts and ideas?
Also, I loved the soundtrack and was thinking about the lyrics, “the blood of the thing, is the truth of the thing” and “they had come too be addicted to truth, until the Christians came” in the song Blood of the Thing. This makes me think that Ganja and Hess’ feeding on the black community is a way in which they are both feeding off of the community and staying connected to an African diaspora because of their vampirism. They are inflicted with an addiction to blood but through it remain within an African identity but also are Europeanized because the capitalist metaphor. Another way in which their identities are not binary but complicated. Also, the composer and the reverend at the end is Sam Waymon, Nina Simone’s brother which is a cool fun fact.