|
Banky's character plays with a common idea about straight guys who say "fag" a lot. It's an explanation that seems to be really popular with a lot of people (and may have crossed your mind just now while reading his dialogue). It goes something like this:
"Guys who are secure with their sexuality don't have to say that stuff... it's the ones that are scared by something they see in themselves that have to run around saying "fag" all the time, because they're insecure, and it's a way of protecting themselves." (It kind of implies to "I don't need to talk about 'fags' because I'm straight. Those guys that talk about 'fags' all the time and stuff are really gay and denying it.)
As trite as that insight has become, there is truth to it... I don't think, however, that it is the best way of understanding Banky.
What's going on with Banky is more complex than Banky being "gay," or being a "closet case": Banky basically revolves around a really shallow, simplistic view of women and men: Women are "chicks" littered about for his collecting who all need "dick," and men live to provide them with that, by which the most ambitious end is meaningless sex (which itself can be a task). "Love" doesn't come up for Banky. Neither does sensitivity, compassion, "chick stuff" (0:09:30). And the women and men who don't fall into his "dick" needing/providing scheme he calls "dykes" and "fags," not because he would hurt or hate them, but more to express that he won't take them seriously because they've strayed from his conception of men and women.
This aspect of Banky's character is useful to this site as a good example of a negative extreme a guy might end up at by picking up "schoolyard" definitions of men and women and running with them... and exaggerating them even, as a kind of masculinity.
Investigating and complicating gender/sexuality, in others and within himself, would inform and mature his perspective... inevitably enlightening himself, his friendships, and his romantic relationships.
|
