Blaxploitation

Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film, emerging in the United States during the early 1970s. Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban black audience, but the genre's audience appeal soon broadened across racial and ethnic lines. The Los Angeles National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) head and ex-film publicist Junius Griffin coined the term from the words "black" and "exploitation." Blaxploitation films were the first to regularly feature soundtracks of funk and soul music and primarily black casts.Variety credited Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and the less radical Hollywood-financed film Shaft (both released in 1971) with the invention of the blaxploitation genre.

When set in the Northeast or West Coast, blaxploitation films are mainly set in poor urban neighborhoods. Terms used against white characters, such as "crackers" and "honky", are common plot and or character elements. Blaxploitation films set in the South often deal with slavery and miscegenation.

Blaxploitation includes several subtypes, including crime (Foxy Brown), action/martial arts (Three the Hard Way), westerns (Boss Nigger), horror (Abby, Blacula), comedy (Uptown Saturday Night), nostalgia (Five on the Black Hand Side), coming-of-age/courtroom drama (Cooley High/Cornbread, Earl and Me), and musical (Sparkle).

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