Do you know what I think of when I hear the word “bisaya“? I think of that time in my childhood when I was hungry during a bus trip with my mom, and a woman I’d never met before, a total stranger, offered me some bread.
I think of Super Typhoon “Yolanda” which destroyed our house when I was 12, but my book collection survived because my family made sure to store them in a waterproof bag knowing how much those books meant to me.
I think of my dear friend, Leanne, surprising me with a jar filled with sweet messages in Bisaya from her and our other friends shortly before I moved out of our hometown.
When I hear the word bisaya, these things come to mind: kindness, comfort, joy, and acts of love big and small alike, in all its different forms.
But to many Filipinos, bisaya is a pejorative. They use “mukhang bisaya” to insult others’ appearance. If a Filipino wants to call someone cheap, stupid, violent, or worthless, chances are their word of choice will be “bisaya,” or even worse, “bisakol.” In the media, Bisaya people are typically either servants or monsters—”aswang” or scary witches.
Even in the 2020s, local shows and films still reinforce stereotypes about Bisaya people. For example, in the 2023 figure-skating teleserye “Hearts on Ice,” Shuvee Etrata played one of the protagonist’s friends, Kring-Kring, with her natural Cebuana accent.
There was a scene where the whole punchline was how Kring-Kring couldn’t pronounce the word “tiramisu,” and another where she scared off some bullies by saying that she came from a family of witches.
The stereotyping even extends to real Bisaya people in the public eye. For instance, many Filipinos refer to Colet Vergara from the girl group BINI as Anger, the personified emotion from the “Inside Out” films. Despite Vergara’s efforts to push back against the nickname, repeatedly telling the public that she isn’t constantly angry, fans and haters alike continue to paint her as angry and aggressive.
Of course, I can’t speak for her. But as an observer, I find it dehumanizing.
It’s pretty obvious why the nickname won’t die. As her fellow BINI member Aiah Arceta explained on the talk show “Kuan on One,” Bisaya speakers might sound “angry” to non-speakers’ ears, but we’re not. Bisaya people are so much more than just one feeling.
We are multifaceted human beings who experience a full spectrum of emotions, not just anger, and deserve to be seen as such. Denying a person this spectrum of feeling strips them of their humanity.
Progress has been painfully slow. In 2018, Viva Films bought the rights to “Magbuwag Ta Kay (MTK),” the first Bisaya romance-comedy. A big company housing MTK seemed like a watershed moment for Bisaya cinema.
Almost seven years after MTK came out, it remains the only full-length Bisaya rom-com in existence. Media focusing on Bisaya characters is still hard to come by.
But I try to find glimmers of hope. Although Vivoree Esclito’s Cebuana character Penelope only appeared in a few episodes of the 2022 teleserye “The Iron Heart,” I appreciated that she was a young scientist whose mother and boyfriend loved her deeply.
Her morena skin and language—with Bisaya lines delivered flawlessly by Esclito, whose mother tongue is Bisaya in real life—weren’t used as punchlines.
At night, I put on my Vispop playlist on Spotify or Bisaya radio stations on my tablet as I try to fall asleep. As a Gen Z kid, I used to cringe at our local radio dramas, but now I appreciate how they offer fiction stories fully written in Bisaya, showing off the melodic and mellifluous qualities of our language, dispelling the notion that Bisaya sounds ugly, harsh, or “barok.”
When a song with Bisaya lyrics hits the mainstream, it becomes a part of my life, and I try to introduce it to other people too. For example, “Free” by Dom Guyot is in my morning playlist. I’ve introduced songs like “Palayo” by Felip, “Cebuana” by Karencitta, and even the original Bisaya version of the classic “Rosas Pandan” to my schoolmates. I have asked for “Day and Night” by Alamat at parties. I’ve written about “Tsada Mahigugma” by Maymay Etrata and “Kasing Kasing” by Juan Karlos and Kyle Echarri academically.
Most recently, Alamat’s Bisaya member, Alas, released the hip-hop song “Don’t Play.” Its lyrics were penned by Alas himself, using a mix of Bisaya, Tagalog, and English. With the narrator deciding to love a girl even though she doesn’t care about him, the song serves as a celebration of raw emotion.
Things like that give me hope. For my part, I write. Maybe one of these days, I’ll write the world’s next Bisaya rom-com. After all, a director who was born in the 1980s recently told me that change happens with young people like me. I don’t believe in destiny, but I was born in 2001—not just a new decade, but a new millennium, too.
Somehow, that seems significant.
The road to progress is steep, yet I persevere. At the root of this is love: love for the Bisaya community, our language, and the amazing Bisaya people in my life, namely my family and friends. I’ve come to realize that in a world where many still fail to see Bisaya people beyond one-dimensional stereotypes, our love and joy are acts of resistance.
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Julienne Loreto, 24, is a professional screenwriter and researcher.