Viva Homophobia! VH1's telenovela reality show highlights, rewards anti-gay attitudes with its same-sex kiss challenge

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on April 21, 2008

Walter Mercado

We've mentioned VH1's newest reality offering, Viva Hollywood!, a few times because of its colossal camp value: in this competition, a handful of aspiring telenovela stars suffer through the Seven Deadly Sins of hilariously over-the-top Spanish-language soaps for the chance at a television contract with Telemundo, with the help of a bizarre assortment of camp icons ranging from Charo to Walter Mercado.

But last night's second installment was anything but hospitable to gay viewers. When the "Lust" challenge asked two of the men to act out a same-sex love scene, one of the stupidly macho contestants, Vicni, flew into a hissyfit of epically childish proportions.

Guest judge Christian de la Fuente eventually talked him into not leaving the house (yes, he was actually going to quit the show rather than have to play a gay character in a two-minute scene and had locked himself in the bathroom to cry about it) and Vinci essentially rewrote the scene to make his character straight, leaving scene partner Berto (also straight, but not an idiotic bigot) to essentially carry the scene by himself. Berto won the challenge and ironically picked Vinci to share his prize, a $10,000 shopping spree at some clubwear store in Encino (hey, this ain't Extreme Makeover Home Edition).

Vinci would probably have a vaca if he saw his picture on a gay site

Interestingly, the other guys in the house tried to talk Vinci back from the brink, telling him he was overreacting to the extreme and that any good actor would be able to separate fact from fiction. When Geovannie pointed out that when he played a gay character in a play his own father was surprisingly supportive, Vinci fired back that no Latino father would ever support seeing his son play a gay person, and then accused Geo of being gay himself before leaving the dinner table in a huff. Wow. 2008, folks. And he's from Miami!

But here's the annoying bit: somehow, Vinci isn't picked as the loser of the challenge. Despite throwing the entire show into disarray, rewriting his scene, and being blatantly homophobic, he was for some reason given a pass by the producers and judges. Considering that the challenge was to portray lust and he removed the lust from his scene, I don't see how they can justify not choosing him as the loser, and it's clear they just kept him around because he's going to stir up more drama later (they wound up getting rid of one of the less volatile characters).

I've got no beef with reality TV, especially when it reveals some interesting truths about human nature, as Vinci's histrionics over playing gay probably did. But the problem comes when that bad behavior is rewarded for the sake of "good television", which only sends a message that this kind of lack of respect is okay as long as you're dynamic enough to carry it. I for one won't be watching any more of this show, which is a shame. I mean, we really don't get enough Walter Mercado, right?

I'm also going to miss seeing Carlos Ponce every week. Is it just me or could he and Raul Esparza have been separated at birth?

Carlos Ponce and Raul Esparza