Thursday, December 20, 2007

Stretching Lastikman's Verbiage

(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Lastikman has captured the hearts of both children and adults not only in Davao but in the whole country, what with his generosity and kindheartedness, not to mention his cinematic transformations on screen from an elastic man to a helicopter, insect, car, cellphone, etc. It is a simple TV series but with plenty of representations from where children can learn from including the villains who represent the 7 deadly sins (GREED-Agaddon, LUST-Mothra, ENVY-Byutiki, SLOTH-Alingasaw, GLUTTONY-Morphino, WRATH-Dr. Jared and PRIDE-Ayessa.)

But lately, the writers of Lastikman seems to be cashing in on the use of Taglish and text Englsh which is not good for children who are just learning the rudiments of the English language. If Lastikman airs longer and with those Taglish words being emphasized like "Ok ba you? Ok na me" or "Here na me"---willmost likely stick to the minds of children viewers, most of whom are already aping such expressions in their daily language use.

As a web content writer, I realized that one of the Filipinos' edge over other outsourcing countries including India is proper English usage. In fact, the ability to speak English properly seems to be an advantage used even by the Overseas Filipino Workers no matter what country they are in. I hope that the production staff of Lastikman will realize this and do something about it or we risk producing children with text or carabao English.

If this is not addressed soon, I may have to punch out Channel 4 from my remote...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is about the part of your article, with regards to the 7 Deadly sins:

Gluttony isn't there. Greed is there twice. Same with Wikipedia, they have the same format right now, it seems like.

Unless they make one of the future villains a glutton, or we have the corresponding villains with their sins in the wrong combination, I don't think they based it on the seven sins. The original plan was for Mang Ninoy to be a glutton named the Blob, but I wonder what happened...

But I just want to bring that up. Thanks!

lovely said...

My fault! Sorry--I inadvertently placed Morphino under greed when he was supposed to be the personification of Gluttony. There you have it--the 7 Deadly Sins. Does it mean Lastikman is closing down soon since it seems that all the villains have been seen?

Aldrin said...

Lastikman's lines are for humor and since the show is on "PG", its the parents' thing to regulate TV to kids.

lovely said...

Hi Aldrin--yes you are right the lines are indeed humurous but they an be humurous without the carabao English. Frankly, Vhong Navarro's antics are funny in itself and the show itself speaks well of generosity. I just hope they do not over-emphasize the text English. And oh, the show is in PrimeTime---targetted at kids---thanks for dropping by

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