Ganja and Hess

Traditional Horror Conventions

The horror film is derived from culturally constructed fears of “Otherness” and “the Other.” As Harry Benshoff explains in “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or Reinscription?,” in the American horror film, there is an oscillation “between the ‘normal,’ mostly represented by the white, middle- class heterosexuality of the films' heroes and heroines, and the ‘monstrous,’ fre- quently colored by racial, sexual, class, or other ideological markers” (31). Normality is threatened by the monster, and the monster must be destroyed to relieve the anxieties created by “otherness” and to return to normality.

Blaxploitation Horror

Inversely, blaxploitation horror films change the traditional identification structures of the horror film. As Benshoff explains, “normality” is also present in the blaxploitation horror films, but “audience sympathy is often redirected away from those figures and toward the figure of the monster, a specifically black avenger who justifiably fights against the dominant order-which is often explicitly coded as racist” (37). In essence, while social structures of heterosexuality and whiteness are still present as figures of normality, the audience identifies more with the black monster. As the monster annihilates the figures of normality, the audience is satisfied, even pleased. Importantly, there must be a “reappropriation of the monster as an empowering black figure...the softening, romanticizing, and even valorizing of the monster” (37). Despite its focus on representing African American culture and challenging social structures predicated on white supremacy the blaxploitation horror film genre cannot be deemed fully progressive, “because the very formula of the genre demonizes difference, be it based on gender, sexuality, or race” (42). The blaxploitation horror film puts black figures as protagonists at the forefront, but simultaneously reinscribes racist tropes as well as harmful ideologies regarding women and homosexuality.

Black Film Aesthetics in Ganja and Hess

In Ganja and Hess, we see many deviations from the conventional horror film--from it’s art house style and elliptical storytelling, which Manthia Diawara argues is “important to the creation of a black film aesthetic” (43), to the blurring of the line between normality and the monster, to the “twoness” of the African American psyche. In the film, by splicing between the past and present--for example, when Ganja describes her dream of being murdered by Hess, followed by clips of her being stabbed outside wearing African robes--the film replicates the diasporic sensation of the African American psyche in being both connected to a past homeland, ancestry, and identity, simultaneously with the present. The film blurs the line between normality and the monster as it blurs the lines between good and evil. Ganja and Hess don’t kill for sadistic pleasure, they kill out of survivalist necessity. Hess even feels remorseful, vomiting blood after commiting a murder and eventually seeking out religion as penance.

“Twoness” in the African American Psyche

As Benshoff explains, “many of the films also play out interesting variations on WE.B. DuBois's concept of "twoness" in the African American psyche” (39). For me, this double identity was akin to the concept of the cyborg, neither human nor machine. This consideration of “twoness” also allows for queer readings of the blaxploitation horror film in its discussions of nonpatriarchical/non-westernized sexualities and dual sexual identities--i.e. bisexuality. More importantly, we see the figure of the “white” black man, who despite his external blackness, distances themselves from black culture. In Ganja and Hess, we see the “twoness” of the African American psyche enacted through Ganja and Hess. The mere term African American denotes a split identity between homeland origins and transplantation to the present location. Ganja and Hess are black figures who have removed themselves from black culture and feed off of those of lower capitalistic status--enacting the same damage as those who used African slave labor--feeding off of the productive power of the other. Ganja and Hess have been immortalized and turned evil by African voodoo, but can only be saved by Western Christianity--another iteration of the split identity between homeland origins and the indoctrination of the western white savior’s culture. Part of the reason that Hess isn’t a particularly queer character, as Benshoff argues in “Monsters in the Closet” that most vampires are, is because of the “black macho ethic...the strong black male avenger; even if monstrous...was romanticized and celebrated (41). While Hess as a vampire may be bisexual, a reiteration of not only the vampire trope but also of the idea of “twoness,” I would argue that the filmmakers, both informed by misoginy (illustrated by the ineffective black mother) and a desire to have a macho black male avenger, did not wish to engage with this particular iteration/interpretation of the diasphoric experience.

Women and Homosexuals in the Blaxploitation Horror Film

Despite its use of alternative modes of storytelling to illustrate the African American experience and psyche, Ganja and Hess enacts the same damaging tropes that Benshoff identifies in blaxploitation and blaxploitation horror films. He states that these  films “tend to uphold male-dominated (hetero)sexuality  and participation in the genre’s usual demonization of women and nonpatriarchical sexualities...western, sex-negative Christian ideology...both conservative Christian pundits and radical black militants often cited strong black women (and effeminate or gay black men) as something that was "wrong" with black culture (40-41). In essence, black women and homosexuals were seen as cites of humor and failure within the black community and were represented as such. The only iteration of motherhood seen in the film is when Hess is next to a female victim lying on a bed, covered in blood, while a baby cries. This scene supports the argument that blaxploitation horror films cannot be fully progressive, as despite racially progressive themes, we see the harmful gendered trope of the black maternal figure as a failure. As explained by Kathleen Fitzgerald in “Recognizing Race and Ethnicity: Power, Privilege, and Inequality,” “black mothers are portrayed in popular culture as bad mothers, in that the matriarch has low morals and does not make her family her priority” (357). This mother, in prioritizing sex, has orphaned her child.