Blaxploitation
noun
a subgenre of American cinema in the 1970s featuring Black protagonists in exploitation films intended to appeal to African American audiences.
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Blaxploitation
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blaxploitation
blaxploitationnouna genre of films featuring Black stereotypes
Blaxploitation
American
[blak-sploi-tey-shuhn]
/ ˌblæk splɔɪˈteɪ ʃən /
Or
Blacksploitation
noun
(often lowercase)
blaxploitation
British
/ ˌblæksplɔɪˈteɪʃən /
noun
Etymology
Origin of Blaxploitation
Blend of Blax (respelling of Blacks ) + exploitation; coined by Dr. Junius Griffin (1929–2005) of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP in 1972 in response to the movie Super Fly (1972)
Vocabulary lists containing blaxploitation
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He did the soundtrack to the Blaxploitation movie “Coffy,” which was co-written by its star Pam Grier and director Jack Hall.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2025
The Black romantic studio pictures of the 1990s were far different from their 1970s Blaxploitation predecessors.
From New York Times ● Feb. 9, 2024
“Rocky” was released in 1976, and it was his mainstream film break — Weathers’ film credits up to that point were for Blaxploitation features “Friday Foster” and “Bucktown.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 2, 2024
The 1970s movie franchise was iconic as it was among the first of what came to be known as Blaxploitation films, a genre featuring action movies that centred on heroic black characters.
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2023
When you hear it mentioned, usually the word that begins and ends the conversation is Blaxploitation, as if that's all they were.
From Salon ● Nov. 30, 2022
He also wrote and produced the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Coffy starring Pam Grier.
From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2025
“Fight Night” flirts with a variety of styles — blaxploitation, police procedural, social drama, the buddy-cop movie — which are successful on their own terms but don’t easily cohere.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2024
Richard Roundtree, who played one of the first Black action heroes in the blaxploitation '70s era of film, died at 81 of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday in his Los Angeles home, his manager said.
From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2023
Likewise, Whitehead used Richard Pryor as an inspiration for the comedian Roscoe Pope, who has in a key role in the book’s midsection sequence about a blaxploitation film shoot.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 19, 2023
Inspired by the blaxploitation films that stormed the movie industry in the 1970s, he shot his own Super 8 adaptations with friends.
From New York Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
