My fellow LGBTQ & Jewish comic nerds, we’ve been here before.
The above tweet bothers me for a couple of reasons – mainly because of what happened with another gay Jewish character in comics – our boy Tim Drake.
BTW – I completely get this persons anger and they have right to shout about it on the twatter; not tone policing, just giving my two cents based on what I know as someone that’s worked in productions.
If and when it’s confirmed that Joe Locke is playing Billy Kaplan, I got two questions for those concerned:
- Do you even know if Joe Locke is Jewish?
- Have the show runners removed Billy Kaplan’s Jewishness?
Number two may be confusing – let me clarify.
Not all show runners dabble in canon.
Case in point: the DC show Titans and their inclusion of a gay yet non-Jewish Tim Drake. Did it bother me? Not at first. I love Tim Drake, and his Jewishness was a big part of why. Yet, when I saw they cast a non-Jewish actor and a person of color, I let it slide because some rep is more important in this day and age…
HOWEVER, the writers of Titans erased Tim’s Jewishness altogether, and I might have forgiven them if they hadn’t turned him into an immature doofus – but I digress.
SO AGAIN – if Joe Locke is playing Billy Kaplan, then Agatha’s Coven of Chaos’ version is definitely gay -BUT- have the writers created a gay Billy/Speedy, and erased their Jewishness?
If that’s the case (as it was with DC’s televised Tim Drake) then the fault lies with the writers and not the actor. I never once blamed Jay Lycurgo for accepting the role of Tim because I knew (having worked for WB) the odds were high that his Jewishness wasn’t part of the package presented to the actor.
Guns, Guys, & Yaoi 2.0 