Wait, What? On Brazilian TV, White Woman Goes ‘Undercover’ as a Black Woman to Fulfill Her Fantasy–Have Sex With A Black Man

While I was poking around my favorite film blog, Shadow & Act, I ran across a story about a Brazilian TV show that ran a special end of the world episode involving a white woman “becoming” a black woman to live out her dream of bedding a black man.

My first thought? What the hell? Seeing as interracial dating in Brazil isn’t taboo, I wondered why the woman didn’t just set out on her quest to sleep with a black man as herself. But this was for TV, and I’m guessing the producers wanted to add an extra twist to make the show more entertaining.

Gatas Negras of the blog, Black Women of Brazil gives a few more details about the show:

On the November 29th episode of Brazil’s Globo TV program Como aproveitar o fim do mundo (How to take advantage of the end of the world), actress Aline Moraes’s character Kátia artificially darkens her skin and dons an afro wig to “become” a black woman. Why? In Globo’s own take on the end of the world craze, Kátia wants do everything she hadn’t managed to do in her life up to that point including fixing the errors. So what does this have to do with looking like a black woman? Check out how the blog called Belezas Negras explained it in a post called “Black Face e o fim do mundo na TV Globo (Blackface and the end of the world on Globo TV)”:

“Globo TV tries to spread the in-vogue belief in the end of the world on the cabalistic day of 12/21/2012, a touch of anticipated spectacle on the couch.

“In its parody of the end of the world on TV, the series Como aproveitar o fim do mundo (How to take advantage of the end of the world) presents an episode in which a white actress, Aline Moraes, is made up as a black woman in order to accomplish one of her “last desires”: to fuck a black man. I used the word “fuck” because I find it more consistent with the final moment in time, straight up with no sweetener or false morality! After all, she only has a short time to accomplish the act.

“In the minds of the authors, by the fictional scene they created, this is one of those things that they believe some white women want at the last minute. The critical conclusion that they ultimately reached is consistent with the policy and standard imagery that Globo TV and its clan of writers commonly produce and exhibit through racist stereotypes offered to the public as entertainment.”

While Globo TV’s show may not have been explicitly racist, it certainly was in bad taste.  And considering Brazilian TV lacks substantial black representation, in spite of the fact the country has the largest black population outside of Nigeria, Globo TV’s decision to depict a white woman “becoming” a black woman simply to sleep with a man was even more problematic.

Check out a clip from the show and let us know what you think.