In 1972, Junius Griffin of the NAACP’s Beverly Hills Hollywood branch fused the words black and exploitation to condemn a new wave of films he argued mass-produced offensive stereotypes. The insult stuck as the genre’s name, yet blaxploitation went on to rewrite film marketing, revolutionize soundtracks and lay visual groundwork for hip hop. This episode traces how the civil rights and black power movements, the 1968 end of the Hays Code, and new programs at UCLA converged to produce Cotton Comes to Harlem, Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweetback film and Gordon Parks’ Shaft.

The conversation examines the studios’ financial motives, the shift from Marxist-tinged early films to mass-produced entertainment, the controversial slave-sploitation subgenre exemplified by Mandingo, and genre variations from Blacula to Black Belt Jones. It also covers the funk and soul scores of Isaac Hayes, James Brown and Curtis Mayfield, the rise of Pam Grier as an action star, the Coalition Against Blaxploitation backed by the NAACP, SCLC and National Urban League, and the genre’s afterlife in Spike Lee, John Singleton, Quentin Tarantino, Black Dynamite and rap.

• How the magical Negro trope and decades of sidelined roles set the stage for heroes who fought the man
• Why Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack works as a Greek chorus against the film’s glamorous visuals
• The financial reality of white producers profiting while black directors and actors were paid flat fees
• The unresolved tension between black empowerment and heroes who were pimps and drug dealers
• How Snoop Dogg, Ice-T and 50 Cent absorbed the pimp persona, the bling and the Cadillacs from the screen