“La Casa de Los Famosos” (Mostly) Brings Out the Worst in its Mexican Viewers

The House of the Famous It is inescapable. The Mexican reality show is an adaptation of the 2021 Telemundo show, similar to Celebrity Big Brotherand it’s everywhere. Try as I might, I can’t go a day without scrolling into a clip and up until this season, everything I knew about it, I had learned against my will.

Last season, when Wendy Guevara a trans woman, was crowned the winner, many were hopeful that change was on the way and that Mexican audiences were finally becoming a bit less toxic and a lot more tolerant. After all, a trans woman winning what is pretty much a 24-hour televised popularity contest seemed like a little ray of sunshine.

However, as the saying goes: all good things come to an end. As soon as the season two cast was announced, many of us realized the season one result hadn’t been an indication of change but rather a fluke in the system.

Adrián Marcelo Moreno, the 34-year-old YouTuber and TV host, is this season’s misogynistic douchebag (and the expected villain of the show) – a role played by Poncho DeNigris last season. During his season, DeNigris, who has been a controversial figure for well over two decades, at least attempted to deconstruct his misogyny and homophobia, and establish a true friendship with Wendy Guevara, who was a key part of his journey away from his toxic past .

Adián Marcelo, though, is a proudly controversial figure even outside the show: one who profits off hating women in a country where roughly 10 women are assassinated every day. His rise to fame came from problematic fatphobic and misogynistic statements that he tries to pass off as “dark humor.” From publicly bragging about being turned on by sexting young women while his wife sleeps next to him to old tweets that border on pedophilia, his record should have kept him out of The House from the beginning.

Once on the show, he spent weeks harassing fellow contestant Gala Montes about her mental health and her family situation and threatened fellow contestant Arath of the Tower and his family if he didn’t abandon the competition. Despite growing outrage from the audience, all of those things seemed to be okay with the show’s production team. Then Unilever, one of the show’s main sponsors, released a statement distancing themselves and all of their brands from The House of Famous – and pulling their sponsorship. It was only when the show’s monetary bottom line was affected that Moreno decided to leave (or, was finally forced to leave, as most of us think was the case).

Moreno isn’t the only questionable casting choice this season either. There’s also Ricardo Peralta, this season’s token LGBTQ+ person Outside of The House, Peralta is a well-established content creator and comedian. He rose to fame back in 2011, when he (along with his friend Teo) started the first LGBTQ+ YouTube channel in Mexico, Pepe and Teo. Peralta does not shy away from showing who he is (or who we thought he was) and sometimes even makes a fool of himself in good fun.

However, as it tends to happen with reality shows that involve confinement, The House of Famous brought out the worst in him, and how sadly, he looks like his true colors: from making comments that range from denying the feminist movement is real (calling it a social fad, saying women are just catty to each other, and blaming women for making “gay men be nothing more than catty mean girls”) to try to weaponize his LGBTQ+ identity against de la Torre, who has been an ally to the community throughout his decades-long career.

Peralta’s statements and actions are so inflammatory and insulting that his follower count took a significant hit, so many people reported his Instagram account that it got deactivated for a few days, and his management team issued a statement distancing themselves from him. While his actions are not as damaging as Moreno’s, his statements still have power and reflect the noxious feelings and ideas of thousands of Mexicans (again, why else would he be allowed to remain in the show otherwise?). The fact that someone is a member of the LGBTQ+ community does not mean they are exempt from criticism and above reproach, as I’m sure Peralta assumed would be the case.

The House of the Famous is proof that we have done very little as a society to right the wrongs of our past: we will accept hate, violence, tokenization, and toxicity as valid forms of entertainment without questioning the harm they do – because yes, despite what Moreno might say , these things have real-life consequences. The content we consume is not only a reflection of who we are but also helps form our judgments and worldviews. How can we expect to evolve as a society when we keep accepting “entertainment” that promotes the worst parts of us?

This season of The House of the Famous makes three things painfully obvious: one, that while there are small moments of hope – like Wendy’s triumph last season and Gala’s openness about her mental health this season – those moments are fickle and fleeting. Two, many content creators and social media influencers lack the skills to step into traditional media, which despite what they might think, offers a wider platform than the short-form media content we see on TikTok, Instagram, or even YouTube. And, three, conventional TV isn’t providing an escape from the harsh realities of our daily lives (politics, routines, family troubles, etc), but rather reinforcing them.

In the end, one of the best characters in the show ended up winning, much like last season. Mario “Mayito” Bezares (yep, the same Mario Bezares wrongfully accused of being involved in the assassination of his friend and TV co-host, Paco Stanley, 25 years ago) took this season’s prize after winning the audience’s hearts for being the house father figure, even going as far as assuring contestant Bridgitte Bozo that they’d continue their “adoptive” father-daughter relationship after the show ended.

While, yes, the season might’ve had a happy and wholesome ending, it’s impossible to ignore the toxicity that took place earlier. For most of season two, the bad heavily outweighed the good (and that’s true even of the reunion). I’m not exactly sure where the line that separates “entertainment” from “reality” is, but The House of Famous seems all too happy to exist in the gray areas while making a profit off of the worst parts of their Mexican viewership.