The Yes Men
Cutting the Corporate Crap
Directed by Dan Olman, Sarah Price, and Chris Smith.
Starring Phil Bayley (Chicago News Reporter), Dr Andreas
Bichlbauer(Himself), Andy Bichlbaum (Himself), Mike Bonanno (Himself),
Michael Moore (Himself), Sal Salamone (Himself).
This documentary is about two activists, Andy and Mike, from an organisation called the Yes Men. After successfully creating a spoof site GWBush.com they move onto bigger things with a false WTO’s website. Soon emails arrive from people who don’t realise the difference and send invitations for WTO representatives to speak at conferences etc, giving Andy and Mike a chance to disseminate their version of WTO politispeak. Without any economic training they successfully pose, around the world, as spokespeople for the World Trade Organisation on TV and as conference delegates in order to spread the word about the WTO’s ‘true motives’ and exploitation of weaker nations. (Andy and Mike even make it to Sydney.) In the process some very clever animations, a little compressed air and lots of gold Lycra are used to hilarious effect.
The Yes Men is short and sweet, and while the structure is far from groundbreaking, the subject matter holds interest. There are some very, very funny moments, and also some awful ones too, as you begin to wonder what it will take to shock some audiences from polite, apathetic applause to criticism. In the tradition of Outfoxed and Super Size Me, The Yes Men uses satire as an effective tool for challenging the role that powerful organisations like the WTO have in shaping our lives.
The Yes Men has won best documentary at the US Comedy Arts Festival, and made the official selection at Toronto, Berlin and Sundance Film Festivals. It is directed by Dan Olman, Sarah Price, and Chris Smith, whose previous credits include the 1999 Sundance Winner American Movie.
Inspired? Become a ‘Yes Man’ (or woman) yourself at www.theyesmen.org
Marianne Close
Possible spoiler.
This good fun documentary about anti-corporate activists, who travel from conference to conference impersonating a member of the World Trade Organization, might not even be a documentary about activists travelling from conference to conference impersonating a member of the World Trade Organization. It might not even be a documentary. It might not even be ‘good fun’.
The film’s protagonists philosophically note that,“satire is fun, sincere not so”.
Before the head-rolling bloodbath of the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette, on being told that her subjects had no bread, famously said, “let them eat cake”. The Yes Men, offers its solution. Though the University students found it grossly offensive, it is after all, just a novel application of the concept used to recycle the body waste of astronauts.
The Yes Men propounds a pragmatist philosophy. If the American Civil war was in fact about the abolition of slavery, it need not have happened. Economic efficacy, they say, would have achieved that in good time. Mechanical invention rendered the cost of maintaining human slaves uneconomic, let alone the outlay required to transport them from their home country and then keep them chained lest they run away.
Management of labor is the issue here. Utilizing third world labor in their home country is cost effective, but surveillance at that distance while maintaining a good lifestyle, remains problematic. The Yes Men addresses this issue at a conference in Finland. They propose the Super-Manager suit, a gold leisure suit with a phallic-ally attached surveillance screen.
This less than 90 minute kind of ‘playback theatre’ movie is a must see for those us with any pretensions of knowing what is ‘going down’ in the world today.
Lou Crow
