By Amir Muhammad
The Malaysian Linguistic Association (Malas) has echoed calls by other parties to ban the controversial movie The Da Vinci Code.
The film is an adaptation of a best-selling novel that deals with some aspects of the Christian faith. But the objection by Malas has nothing to do with theology because "we don't even know who Theo is", says its president Ambi Mohan.
The association's chief objection is, instead, linguistic.
"For too long we have sat by and allowed language to be polluted but we have decided that enough's enough. The Da Vinci Code should be banned because we don't want to encourage youngsters to use 'da' as a lazy shorthand for 'the'.
"We see this in rap lyrics," he claims.
"All this talk about 'hanging out with da hoes'. You should be hanging out with THE hoes. This sort of begs the question of why someone would want to 'hang out' with gardening implements to begin with, but i am not here to question lifestyle choices, merely spelling, grammar and semantics."
He said the association might reconsider its protests if the filmmakers changed its name to The The Vinci Code.
"But even this is problematic because having two 'thes' in a row look ugly. So the film should be called The Vinci Code."
The film's producers could not be reached for comment.
"What a load of crap!"
Now there's a line I would like to dedicate to The Malaysian Linguistic Association (MALAS).
With reference to the article entitled the above, I am extremely appalled by the calls to ban the movie, 'The Da Vinci Code' by the association. Obviously, MALAS has nothing better to do.
Their reason for calling the ban is due to the word 'Da', which they thought was a linguistic misusage of the word, 'The'. It is not! Da Vinci is part of the name, Leonardo Da Vinci, therefore there is no such misusage in the movie's title.
One should first explore the reasoning behind the naming of the book/movie etc. before passing judgement such as this, to avoid people like me writing in in (is this a linguistic error too?) the hopes to embarrass people such as MALAS president Ambi Mohan.
For his sake, here's the first paragraph to the text explaining the plot from the book:
"While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci…clues visible for all to see…and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter."
Now can you see where the title is coming from?
The article's last paragraph read, "The film's producers could not be reached for comment." Thank god for that otherwise Malaysia will be a laughing stock, again?
Come on la people... Don't be MALAS and find something better to do, or get a real job! Or go after the people who misuse our Malay language eg. Prebiu for Preview instead of Sedutan. Even the word, 'Sedutan' seem to be questionable.
5 comments:
http://evariel.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/2006/05/shame_on_you_am.html
i posted late, coz i just read the news this morning. but nice piece of work u got here, bro. :)
Amir Muhammad's entire page every Thursday is meant as a spoof, like The Onion website lah! The joke's on you, bro!
Yea, kinda realized that when he replied to my mail. This is what happens when you get the chance to pick up a newspaper when you're not at work! - Bah!!!
no..no..
the MAIN problem is the satire is in NATIONAL newspaper. you know, where REAL stories are being put in, even the entertainment sections.
OR..it's just a way that they (in this case mr Amir) want to tell us that national newspapers are full of joke and never be taken intellectually nor seriously.
ah..we're gullible most of the time anyways. maybe this is what he wants, somebody to riled up his name on the web. at least he won't spend anything to make his name rise to the top again, huh? :)
Perhaps.
But according to him, he's been getting alot of irate emails about the article. So maybe the Malaysian public aren't as gullible as we would think?
Perhaps not.
Maybe what fez suggested about adding a disclaimer line at the bottom of the page for the humourless insufferable critics, would be a good idea after all? Especially when his page is just an armslength from the headlines.
But then, where's the fun in that? No more irate emails from politically correct critics, or a prelude to alleviate his controversial name. It would totally defeat the purpose.
P/S: Wonder where he got the name Ambi Mohan. A banana leaf version of Amir Muhammad perhaps? :)
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