The internet came up with a term for the way Hollywood colors places outside the U.S.: s**thole color grading.

There’s a really good reason why color is such a big deal on-screen. Color helped 21st Century filmmakers, starting with Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Traffic,’ differentiate spaces, timelines, and plots in the digital age.

That still doesn’t really explain *why* Hollywood continues to portray developing, struggling, or simply foreign countries in a literal negative light.

Colorists and film experts don’t think this was ever meant to be a harmful or offensive trope, as a lot of the color choices filmmakers gravitate towards are based in things like climate and temperature. But over the years, those rationales have become oversimplified.

Soderbergh used color to differentiate space, but over time the technique was used to oversimplify and dehumanize space. Today, s**thole color grading is most often seen in action and adventure films, as well as in films with violence in foreign countries.

“What happens when you take footage of Black skin and turn the contrast really high?” Well, it might just make violence against Black and brown bodies more palatable for American audiences.

According to the Director of Photography of ‘Insecure,’ Ava Barofsky ( @ABerkofsky ), s**thole color grading is “uniquely American.” S**hole color grading continues to appear in shows like ‘Breaking Bad’ and movies like last year’s ‘Extraction.’

At the end of the day, the way many American movies and television shows portray foreign countries, like Somalia and Mexico, is racist. And it’ll only keep happening, unless we call Hollywood out on it and employ more non-white people behind the camera.