The Yes Men Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)September 20th, 2004
THE YES MEN
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
United Artists
Grade: B-
Directed by: Chris Smith, Sarah Price, Dan Ollman
Cast: Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno
Screened at: MGM, NYC, 8/18/04
Are you having trouble sleeping? Try this. Take out your old Poli Sci 101 textbook and look up WTO. That's World Trade Organization. Are your eyes glazing over already? Learning the functions of various national and international organizations is a cure for insomnia, but look at what Chris Smith, Sarah Price and Dan Ollman did with those soporific letters WTO! They filmed Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, prankster/activists, who set up a web site with the URL http://gatt.org which many internet readers logged onto and thought that this site was the official one for WTO. To their surprise, the scam worked far better than they imagined, as organizations in Sydney, Australia, Tempere, Finland, Plattsburgh, New York and an international TV channel booked them, thinking that they represented the official, public relations stances of the WTO.
When Mike and Andy went to a Finnish textile conference, they called for reintroducing slavery in order to increase corporate profits. No one in the distinguished audience seemed alarmed, as though all believed that, well, if that's what an organization on their political wavelength, WTO, believes, why not? That's the least of their scams. Andy donned a management leisure suit, which he extolled as far more comfortable than conventional business attire–which got a laugh from the audience–but then, zoom, a tug at the belt and out came a giant phallus that would have found a comical home in the Greece of Aristophanes. Attached to the upper end of said phallus is a small computer that can spy on workers in the Third World who would have small chips painlessly implanted into their shoulders. Shocks would be delivered from thousands of miles away to any who are shirking their duties. No one in the audience stirred. No one even asked a question. Why? No, they did not look shocked at all. They simply assumed that if a stately group like WTO favors this management technique, sure, why not?
In the funniest scam, they spoke to a group of college students in Plattsburgh, New York about a plan to recycle hamburgers by converting the poop of burger eaters in the First World into new, purified burgers. In that way a single burger could ultimately feed ten people who are starving in the Third World. This time they got caught, signifying that college kids know more about the world than business managers ten, twenty, thirty years older than they. The kids tossed plastic replicas at the globe at them. Some walked out.
Michael Moore gets some time by showing a Mexican border town whose workers were told fifteen years back to feel good about free trade and globalization. Work for the developed nations making clothing and whatnot and in a decade or so, all workers would be driving shiny new cars, they believed. Moore returned to the town to find it the same tattered slum it was a decade and half back.
There a problem in the very thesis of these inventive young scammers. Are they criticizing globalization? For example, Michael Moore shows that working for whatever pittance the big corporation pays Mexicans to make shirts has no impact on their standard of living. They're still slum dwellers. Well then, if an American company did not set up a plant in the town and thereby did not offer them jobs, what exactly would the Mexicans be doing?
Unfortunately Andy and Mike fail to explain the real criticism of globalism, which is that American corporations are getting welfare from our government, subsidies that enable them to sell their cotton or wheat or whatever to Third World countries at a price lower than what the people in underdeveloped lands could sell, thereby wiping out local competition.
Then again, is Mike and Andy's aim to show that people will believe anything provided that information comes to then from alleged members of prestigious organizations? If they're exposing The Big Lie technique, so what? How does this impact on their politically leftist agenda?
Ultimately, "The Yes Men" is an amusing documentary, but alas is filmed with all the graininess that we've come to expect from hand-held digital cameras. Andy and Mike could conceivably give hackers, slackers, and others who are clever with their computerese to imitate their example with potentially entertaining results.
Rated R. 83 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten
at [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
