Blaxploitation or
blacksploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the
exploitation film. It emerged in the
United States in 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 Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban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, which is a
portmanteau of 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.