Meanings
- uncountablebroadcastingA genre of exploitation films, starring teenage actors with teen-oriented plots involving drugs, sex, alcohol or crime.
We sat down to watch a teensploitation slasher flick.
3 more examples
With 1955's Blackboard Jungle—the first film to traffic heavily in youth rebellion and sex, the twin pillars of any teenager's existence—a brilliant, if obvious, new genre of film was born: teensploitation, movies about teenagers made for teenagers but watched by everybody.
1999 February, Bill Sienkiewicz, “Forever Young”, in SPIN, SPIN Media, page 641999, Edmond Grant, The Motion Picture Guide: 1999 Annual (The Films of 1998), CineBooks, page vii, Adrian Lyne's LOLITA was more notable for the terror it struck in controversy-shy American distributors than for its content, reducing taboo subject matter to a teensploitation film with a literary pedigree.
The influence of Rebel Without a Cause is difficult to underestimate.^([sic]) Despite what appeared to be just another entry in the burgeoning teensploitation trend, the film distinguished itself for a variety of reasons.
2005, Rob McInnes, Timothy Shary, Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen, Columbia University Press (Wallflower), page 21
Origin
From teen + -sploitation (from exploitation film). From 1980s.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
teensploitation. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/teensploitation
“teensploitation.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/teensploitation. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “teensploitation,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/teensploitation.
Source: teensploitation on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.