Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. The genre does rank among the first after the race films in the 1940s and 1960s in which black characters and communities are the protagonists and subjects of film and television, rather than sidekicks, antagonists or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
Blaxploitation films were originally aimed at an urban African-American audience but the genre's audience appeal soon broadened across racial and ethnic lines. Hollywood realized the potential profit of expanding the audiences of blaxploitation films.
Variety credited the Sweet Sweetback ↗ "Baadasssss Song" and the less radical Hollywood-financed film Shaft (both released in 1971) with the invention of the blaxploitation genre, although Cotton Comes to Harlem was released the prior year. Blaxploitation films were also the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music.
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Blaxploitation ]
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