Paying to see
The Yes Men
is a fair trade.
Filmmaker Michael Moore is overt in his subversion, raising red flags wherever he goes with his trademark hat and frumpy frame. Moore's antics in
Fahrenheit 9/11
, like reading the Patriot Act over an ice cream truck's megaphone,
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are funny but appear to have little effect beyond looking good on screen and annoying his intended targets.
Moore could stand to learn a thing or two from
The Yes Men
, a politically driven documentary in which he makes an appearance but which contains none of his bombast or heavy-handed moralizing. The film follows two activists, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, as they travel the world undermining the World Trade Organization.
The Yes Men, a group of political pranksters, gained notoriety in 1999 when
, their parody of then-candidate Bush's website, ruffled the feathers of the presidential hopeful. Next, the two set their sights on globalization, creating
, a WTO parody site so convincing that emails began pouring in, inviting the Yes Men to conferences to speak on behalf of the WTO.
Clad in thrift store suits and equipped with fake business cards, Bichlbaum and Bonanno accepted several offers to lecture at trade conferences, portraying the organization they pretend to represent as an unfeeling business machine and catching it all on film. While there are a few "testimonials" from "experts" about the toll the WTO is taking on developing nations, the film makes no objective effort
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to explain the organization or its policies. In fact, the practices of the WTO go almost entirely unexplained. The filmmakers instead use the lectures given by the Yes Men, shown in their entirety, to explain the hazards of the WTO, allowing the pranksters to become representatives of the organization to the film audience as well as the lecture audience. While this may betray the "fair and balanced" credo of journalists, it works brilliantly on film, allowing the subtlety of the message to sink in without bludgeoning the audience.
During a lecture on the "benefits" of recycling excrement into McDonald's hamburgers to feed starving people, a group of college students become outraged, questioning the Yes Men about the morals of feeding feces to the poor. Yet during lectures to business professionals, the audience sits politely, claps at the end and never once questions what is said, no matter how outrageous.
The Yes Men
thus reveals how the bottom line inhibits the ability to be shocked, provided profit margins climb. Like
Jackass
with an agenda,
The Yes Men
seeks to restore a little wholesome shock and awe, one prank at a time.
