Is It a Big Deal That the Actor Playing the Flash Isn't Straight?

[Behind the Aegis]

Actor Ezra Miller has been cast as the Flash in Warner Brothers’ eponymous movie, which is slated to premiere in 2018. That's big news even for those who aren't diehard DC Comics fans, because Ezra Miller is also openly queer, making it the first time a non-heterosexual has played the lead in a superhero movie.

Let's get one distinction out of the way: The 22-year-old Miller identifies as queer, not gay. Though the word can mean different things to different people, it’s often used as an umbrella term to mean “somewhere on the spectrum of sexuality that's not 100 percent straight.” In a 2012 interview, Miller told The Advocate “I’m queer... I have a lot of really wonderful friends who are of very different sexes and genders. I am very much in love with no one in particular."

It may seem ridiculous that we’re talking about this in 2014, when it feels like there is no shortage of openly non-heterosexual actors in Hollywood. But the casting choice of a queer man as the lead in a big-budget superhero, the embodiment of traditional American masculinity, is inarguably a huge deal. Queer actors are still up against the surprisingly pervasive idea that a non-straight actor can’t play a straight character. This has historically been true not just of superhero roles, but of all types of straight roles in mainstream American films.

--snip--

You may remember when Bret Easton Ellis tweeted that openly gay actor Matt Bomer wasn’t fit for the role of Christian Grey in the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey. Ellis opined that “Fifty Shades of Grey demands an actor that is genuinely into women." That's a stubbornly persistent attitude: We love and applaud straight male actors for portraying gay characters, but we apparently don’t trust queer actors to be able to do the reverse.

more: http://www.vice.com/read/its-a-big-deal-that-the-actor-playing-the-flash-is-not-straight-117

[MarianJack]

1. To further your point,...

...if you remember "Frasier", the actor who played the voraciously heterosexual Bulldog is gay, as is Amanda Bearce from " Married With Children".

PEACE!

[NaturalHigh]

2. I didn't know there was going to be a Flash movie.

He wasn't one of my favorites, but I liked him in some of the crossover comics with Superman. Honestly they made him seem cooler in the Saturday morning cartoons than they did the comic books.

I hope they make the character with some moral conflicts, like Batman. In the old days, Superman and Flash were always the goody-two-shoe baby faces who never had an angry thought while Batman struggled not to beat someone half to death (like the Dark Knight movies).

[Half-Century Man]

3. The only way sexuality is even a topic around the character of the Flash or a movie of him is

with sex, sometimes faster isn't better.


Might as well discuss whether he prefers green tea flavored ice cream (for the record, I'm pro green tea ice cream).

[Bluenorthwest]

4. It's actually old hat that he's gay but playing straight, what's new is that he's gay and playing

straight AND the straight public knows this. Gay actors playing straight leads is not at all new, what's new is that the public is aware of that fact.
Oh, and Bret Ellis is a twit.

[Prophet 451]

5. I have more of a problem that he's too young

He'll presumably be playing Barry Allen (the first modern age Flash). But Barry was already a forensic scientist when he was struck by lightening. That means he went through a four-year degree program, at least two years post-grad and however many years he's been on the job. Miller is too young for that. Also, Barry is blond. The current TV show gets around it by making him a new hire as an assistant forensic tech.

He could be playing Wally West or Bart Allen but they're both legacy characters and the movie would have to explain why they're legacies.