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 fun ...