Veteran actress and television personality, Grace Omaboe has lamented that modern depictions of Twi language used in some local productions has lowered movie standards.
Speaking in an interview with Hitz @1, the veteran actress noted that the constant depiction and excessive use of the Twi language as a tool to disrespect and insult others is damaging to the film industry.
“It’s really bad,” she said. “They think that the more you can insult, the better you become a star.”
Asserting that ongoing tropes are inauthentic, she alluded to past times when scripts would “polish the language,” comparing it to a recent increase in offhand use of strong language.
Madam Omaboe noted that, increasingly, more people use disrespectful terms on a regular basis, without considering their potentially harmful impacts.
Her comments are consistent with Jim Awindor, a lecturer at the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI), who speaking in an interview with Hitz @1 recently expressed worry that current filmmakers are producing movies without consideration for the cultural values of Ghana.
Sharing recent observations of local dialect films having resulted in an opinion of Twi as a “language of insult,” Mr. Awindor suggested that filmmakers make conscious efforts to be mindful of what they present to the public.
Echoing Mr. Awindor’s observations, she remarked that comedic delivery has influenced the flippant use of severe insults, such as the terms “kwasia” and “aboa.”
She clarifies with another comparative example: “[In the past] if you tell your husband [that he is kwasia], you are in trouble… The man can even divorce you for that.”
Using such terms, in her opinion, is still very degrading and further misrepresentation of the Twi language and its speakers, especially when accounting for current film making trends.