Yellow Filter and Representations of the Global South
The opening shot of Netflix’s new film ‘Extraction’ opens on a smoggy, jaundiced city cut through by a congested, unappealing waterway.
The camera pans along the shorefront, the city awash in an orange glow, its buildings obscured by haze; next, drone shots of dense houses float by. Ultimately, the camera zooms in on a smoking bridge, where the film’s star Chris Hemsworth darts across, weapon in hand. Enveloped in yellow, he has a fleeting memory of a much brighter place.
The viewer is not told what city this is, suggesting that it does not matter. By now enough has been observed to understand that Mr. Hemsworth is somewhere in a developing country and the particularity of the place is not essential to the story.
Immediately upon release, commenters took to Twitter and other social media sites to lambast the film’s ‘yellow filter’ used in the depiction of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Elisabeth Sherman of Matador Network explains that yellow filter is “almost always used in movies that take place in India, Mexico, or Southeast Asia… [and is] supposed to depict warm, tropical, dry climates. But it makes the landscape in question look jaundiced and unhealthy, adding an almost dirty or grimy sheen to the scene.”
Other examples of the use of yellow filter when representing Global South countries abound in Western popular culture. The new season of Netflix’s ‘Fauda’, an Israeli television series following an Israeli Defense Forces commander, was recently taken to task for its soured depiction of Palestine:
Source: Yousef Slym on Twitter.
The American television series ‘Breaking Bad’ also made liberal use of a yellow filter for scenes set in Mexico:
Source: ‘Breaking Bad 5x01 — Mike and universal symbol for keys’ via YouTube.
Also, in 2012’s ‘Zero Dark Thirty’:
Source: ‘Zero Dark Thirty Clip: Kill Him For Me’ via YouTube.
And in 2001’s ‘Black Hawk Down’ in Mogadishu, Somalia:
Source: “Great scene from Black Hawk Down! ‘Get on that fifty!’” via YouTube.
But why yellow and orange? What do these colors connote? In Western cultures, yellow and orange are frequently used to mark signs of increasing danger, in everything from traffic lights, to radiation hazard scales and Homeland Security terrorism advisory systems. There are also negative medical associations including yellow fever, jaundice and Agent Orange. The filter in effect communicates a marked, but unspoken ‘difference’ to the viewer, indicating a heightened sense of warning or imminent danger.
2017’s ‘Blade Runner 2049’ used a heavy yellow filter to represent a hostile, unnatural and unhealthy post-apocalyptic environment. The color-scape was in fact inspired by the 2009 dust storm in Sydney, Australia, which left the city awash in cataclysmic orange and yellow light for days.
Source: ‘Blade Runner 2049 — K and Deckard Bar Scene HD’ via YouTube.
These associations are in marked contrasts to those of cooler tones, like green and blue, which are commonly used to symbolize a healthy and thriving environment.
But why use a yellow filter to represent other countries at all, and why is it so pervasive in Western popular culture? And what are its effects on viewers?
Stuart Hall, the Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist and political activist, has written extensively on representations of ‘the Other’ in popular culture. Hall explains that culture is a site for the negotiation of meaning, “where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged: it is also the stake to be won or lost in that struggle.” In other words, culture is a contest between the dominant or majority and the marginalized or minority groups.
A key part of any culture is the images it produces, particularly in popular film and television. In his 1997 book ‘The Spectacle of the Other,’ Hall argues that images are replete with meanings, including the ‘preferred meaning’ of the creator, who may use editing and captions to further key the viewer in to their intended meaning. By decoding how these images and their preferred meanings depict particular groups of people, the ideology-laden perspectives of the creator and their dominant cultural views can be revealed. The sum of these images is the representation, or “the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective.”
Media representation matters because it influences how people think of such groups or places. For example, interviews by PBS in 2019 with middle and high school students revealed that “for some young students, portrayals of minorities in the media not only affect how others see them, but it affects how they see themselves.” Certainly, a lack of positive and equitable representation can be internalized and used to implicitly limit inclusion and diversity of people in different industries, spheres and types of roles. Recently there have been commendable advancements in the development of minority-led film and television, from ‘Black Panther’ to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ and ‘Never Have I Ever,’ but the use of yellow filter in other mainstream movies and series threatens to undermine the benefits of gains in positive representation.
According to Hall, “representation is a complex business and, especially when dealing with ‘difference’,” as “it engages feelings, attitude and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, common-sense way.” Indeed, the concept of ‘difference’ occupies a unique and contested space in linguistics and psychology, the interpretations of which are not mutually exclusive, as Hall previously argued. These theories help illuminate how the use of yellow filter can be a projection of prejudice, power or ideology.
In the approach to linguistics associated with Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, ‘difference’ is seen as essential to creating meaning. For example, what it is to be an American is understood by what it is not — French, Japanese, or Bangladeshi. This understanding of ‘difference’ is similar to that used in Freudian analysis, where the self is defined by what it is not: male or female, white or black, American or Somali. The well-known psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon used this theory of ‘difference’ in his explanation of racism, where the white person has historically refused to recognize the reciprocal point of ‘otherness’ from the Black person’s point of view. It is important to note that ‘difference’ itself is agnostic to which side it represents: it can be both positive and negative. Indeed, ‘difference’ has an impartial duality, allowing it to inhabit both sides.
What is not ambivalent is power. According to French philosopher Michel Foucault discourse, that is, the ways of constituting knowledge and social practices, including via filmmaking or in popular culture, is a form of power. Dominant or majority groups have power because “Power produces; it produces reality, it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth,” just as filmmakers produce movies and television series. By using a yellow filter to mark depictions of Global South countries, Western television and filmmakers are expressing their power and privilege to impose a preferred interpretation of such places to their viewers.
The representation of ‘difference’ and often specifically the Global South in popular culture is inherently linked to power, including power over representation and power to represent whom and whatever, in any way. It is a projection of power to paint Mexico and Bangladesh yellow, cast white actors to portray actors of color and hire actors of color only for stereotypical roles. Indeed, the producers of knowledge and culture, like mainstream filmmakers, have the power to shape popular beliefs of the people and places they depict. As Karl Marx wrote, “they cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.”
When Western movies and television use a yellow filter to capriciously paint places outside its sphere, it is perpetuating a vision of developing countries as hostile, unhealthy and toxic. Such usage invigorates racist stereotypes and affirms implicit biases. It posits false dichotomies such as ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘here’ and ‘out there,’ contributing to a mistaken sense of awareness of what life is actually like in countries outside of the US and the Global North. This deliberate act of misunderstanding, akin to misdirection, is particularly perilous as the world faces crises that require greater global understanding and cooperation, including a reckoning of how Black people are treated in the United States and elsewhere, the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and the recent retreat of democratic principles and liberties in countries around the world.
Images of the Global South oversaturated by yellow filter are a disservice to the viewers of popular film and television, and unfortunately reveals the chasm Western popular culture still needs to cross to create more equitable, accurate and inclusive representation.
