In US cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the Black civil rights movement , the black power movement , and the Black Panther Party , political and sociological circumstances that facilitated Black artists reclaiming their power of the Representation of the Black ethnic identity in the arts.
In criticizing the Hollywood portrayal of the multiracial society of the US, Griffin said that the blaxploitation genre was "proliferating offenses" to and against the Black community, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of inherent criminality.
After the cultural misrepresentation of Black people in the race films of the s, the s, and the s, the Blaxploitation movie genre presented Black characters and Black communities as the protagonists and the places of the story, rather than as background or secondary characters in the story, such as the Magical negro or as the victims of criminals. The cultural emergence of the Blaxploitation subgenre was facilitated by the Hollywood movie studios adopting a permissive system of film ratings in Initially, blaxploitation films were black cinema produced for the entertainment of Black people in the cities of the US, but the entertainment appeal of the Black characters and human stories extended into the mainstream cinema of corporate Hollywood.
The movie-business magazine Variety reported the films Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Shaft as the mainstream blaxploitation films that followed the assimilation of blaxploitation into mainstream cinema, by way of the film Cotton Comes to Harlem Blaxploitation films set in the Northeast or West Coast mainly take place in poor urban neighborhoods. Pejorative terms for white characters, such as " cracker " and " honky ", are commonly used.
Blaxploitation films set in the South often deal with slavery and miscegenation. Following the example set by Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song , many blaxploitation films feature funk and soul jazz soundtracks with heavy bass , funky beats and wah-wah guitars.
