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Concept
Exploitation film
Summary
An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain a cult following.
Exploitation films often include themes such as suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, gore, destruction, rebellion, mayhem, and the bizarre. Such films were first seen in their modern form in the early 1920s, but they were popularized in the 60s and 70s with the general relaxing of censorship and cinematic taboos in the U.S. and Europe. An early example, the 1933 film Ecstasy, included nude scenes featuring the Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr. The film proved popular at the box office but caused concern for the American cinema trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The organisation, which applied the Hays Code for film censorship, also disapproved of the work of Dwain Esper, the director responsible for exploitation movies such as Marihuana (1936) and Maniac (1934).
The Motion Picture Association of America (and its predecessor, the MPPDA) cooperated with censorship boards and grassroots organizations in the hope of preserving the image of a "clean" Hollywood, but the distributors of exploitation film operated outside of this system and often welcomed controversy as a form of free promotion. Their producers used sensational elements to attract audiences lost to television. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention in academic circles, where it is sometimes called paracinema.
"Exploitation" is loosely defined and arguably has as much to do with the viewer's perception of the film as with the film's actual content. Titillating material and artistic content often coexist, as demonstrated by the fact that art films that failed to pass the Hays Code were often shown in the same grindhouses as exploitation films.
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