ABSTRACT
Crimesploitation is a genre of commercial television (TV) programming that American producers developed in the 1980s that depicts the commission, detection, prosecution, and punishment of crimes committed by persons who are understood by audiences to be "real people", that is, non-actors. Crimesploitation is a clear manifestation of the classical exploitation genre. Ideologically and aesthetically, it resembles the films of the classical era more than those of the 1960s and 1970s. The chapter first shows how aesthetically and ideologically, contemporary crime-reality TV fits Eric Schaefer's description of the classical exploitation genre. It then demonstrates how crimesploitation helps to understand aspects of American political culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Like classical exploitation films, crimesploitation constructs a kaleidoscopic array of others, from prostitutes to murderous "gang-bangers" to child molesters, who inspire both curiosity and revulsion. A more significant structural feature of crimesploitation is its extensive recycling of images and clips.
