YMMV / Ganja & Hess

• Awesome Music: The tracks where Sam Waymon sings are particularly notable with the soulful The Blood of the Thing and the delightfully funky You've Got To Learn, To Let it Go whose studio version plays during the credits.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Ganja performs a monologue discussing a snowball fight in which she was being chased by boy for which her mother called her a whore is seemingly seperated from any prior or future events in the film directly after a dinner sequence in which she confronts Hess believing he killed her husband.
• Central Theme / Death of the Author: Although, Gunn intended for the movie to be primarily about addiction, the film also sparked discourse and analysis about vanishing cultural identity and the perils and pressures of assimilation on Afro-descendants in America.
• Cult Classic: The film is generally considered to be one within most art film / black film circles.
• Vindicated by History: Ganja & Hess was notoriously panned by critics for its existence as a black film that didn't submit to the genre tropes of Blaxploitation in its day. Now it's original cut is being held in the Muesuem of Modern Art.

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