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• Blaxploitation
  Blaxploitation

  noun

  a subgenre of American cinema in the 1970s featuring Black protagonists in exploitation films intended to appeal to African American audiences.
• blaxploitation
  blaxploitation

  noun

  a genre of films featuring Black stereotypes

Blaxploitation

American  

[blak-sploi-tay-shuhn] / ˌblæk splɔɪˈteɪ ʃən /

Or Blacksploitation

noun

(often lowercase)

1. 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 British  

/ ˌblæksplɔɪˈteɪʃən /

noun

1. a genre of films featuring Black stereotypes

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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)

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Blaxploitation blaxploitation

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

“Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a Black — I used to get more offended by that than just — I grew up watching Blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, ‘That’s great.’

From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2024

PolyGram executive Harry Weinger reached out to Bitton and asked him to lend the record label his copy of a rare Blaxploitation soundtrack so the company could make a reissue.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 15, 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

This is the second movie that White has written with Byron Minns; the first was “Black Dynamite,” the 2009 Blaxploitation spoof that White also starred in.

From New York Times ● Sep. 14, 2023

Judy Pace, a pathbreaking model and star of blaxploitation films who appeared in television shows through the 1960s and ’70s and the hit made-for-TV movie “Brian’s Song,” died last week.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2026

He also wrote and produced the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Coffy starring Pam Grier.

From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2025

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

In a Variety interview about Black Noir Cinema, one of the film’s producers looked beyond the echoes: The initiative is about creating “Black folk heroes,” not recreating the blaxploitation genre.

From New York Times ● Jul. 12, 2023