‘Blaxploitation’ Term Was Meant to Deter Black Audiences

Film icon Pam Grier is clarifying her take on the blaxploitation genre term itself, 50 years after her Black-led crime films like “Coffy” and “Foxy Brown” emerged as cult classics.

Grier told The Hollywood Reporter during the “It Happened in Hollywood” podcast that the term “blaxploitation” was originally meant to be derogatory — and deter Black audiences from the box office. The then-president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the NAACP, Junius Griffen, is credited with combining the words “Black” and “exploitation” to create the term that was intended to criticize the sex and violence of the genre that seemingly perpetuated racist stereotypes. However, the blaxploitation films in question progressively included civil rights and Black Power movement storylines (along too with plots of pimps and drug dealers), and became box office hits.

“They coined it just to let the exhibitors know, ‘It’s for the Black market. You’ll have the food, the culture, the dialogue, the “deuce and a quarter” [a nickname for the Buick Electra 225, named for its length of 225 inches], everything,’” Grier said. “They would know how to book that project, that film, and what region to book it in. It was political, actually. It was a term meant to be negative so that the Black audience wouldn’t support the movies and theaters, and there would be room for mainstream movies to take over that space. It was basically a political marketing ploy.”

Yet Grier clarified that there is not only blaxploitation onscreen, but rather exploitative genre films for any race and gender. “There was white exploitation, Black exploitation. It’s all exploitation — everybody’s shooting and killing, and it’s funded by white filmmakers,” she said. “Then we had ‘Shaft,’ we had ‘Superfly,’ we had heroes in the hood that were Black. They were Robin Hoods. Robbing from the rich, protecting the community from the powerful and the rich and giving it to the less fortunate.”

Grier also pointed to the political feminism of “blaxploitation,” especially after her film “Coffy.”

“It wasn’t called ‘exploitation’ until I walked in a man’s shoes,” Grier said. “I used martial arts and I held guns. I come from a country environment, went hunting with a 30-06 [rifle]. I understand rifles and guns and hunting and throwing people over my shoulder. So maybe they meant it was ‘exploiting’ the woman, the little woman who’s not supposed to fight for herself, supposed to let the man come in and save her. Well, sometimes they’re not there. And you have to be a little bit exploitative to save your ass, OK?”