Review of The Yes Men (2003) by Mike C — 15 Dec 2010

Proof that few things are cooler than intellectual activism. At least to me. A documentary from 2003, I thought this to be quite relevant at the end of 2010 with everything going on in the US. Many complain that the documentary is boring, but I guess you have to like the stuff they talk about.

The most brilliant bit is this: posing as a WTO official and a McDonalds official, the two guys go to a college campus to talk about ridding the world of hunger through Reburgers. Basically, 80% of nutrients pass through the body the first time, so the idea is a company such as McDonalds could gather that nutritious waste and pass it on to starving people in third-world countries. The No. 1, No. 2, etc. would not be different meals, but indicative of the number of times the meal has been recycled. It's fucking brilliant and got the kids at the college up in arms. Which is kind of important.

Another bit featured the guy giving a speech as a WTO rep. He's talking about how slavery, if not for the civil war, would have graduated to cheap labor through the free market. It's a rather brilliant idea of how it is more expensive to bring slaves to the US than to just use them on their own soil, which is what American corporations are fond of doing. But how can the boss go about his day? He rips off his suit to introduce the leisure suit featuring an inflated phallus-like object with a screen so he can constantly watch workers while working out, etc.

Both of these stunts are small in the big scheme of things. The McDonalds thing doesn't go much further than the classroom. As pointed out by less intelligent docu watchers, the suit idea does not draw any ire from the crowd to which it is presented. But the media definitely picked that one up, and as the guy in the film says of a huge picture of the outfit in a foreign newspaper...to people reading, this is the WTO. The story was picked up my many magazines, so to say the stunt had no impact is kind of stupid.

I don't think the writers worked this angle and maybe they didn't even see it, but I find it interesting that the college kids sniffed out the bullshit and called them on it while the PhDs and businessmen at the other meeting barely batted and eyelash at the ridiculous suit. Does this point to something bigger? I think so. I think it begs the question of when and where morality leaves the system. Those kids were free to question as they were not into their careers. With families to support, homes to pay for, etc, would they still be critical of such an idea if they stood to make large amounts of money from it?

Finally, this documentary is entertaining despite its potential for being boring and maybe its unenthusiastic presentation. But look at the news. Our very own government basically said it will not work to fix anything until the wealthiest 32,000 Americans get an extended tax cut. This means that everyone else could face a similar increase if the Democrats did not agree to that extension. Is that complete horseshit or what? In other words, all these rich guys are getting rich off the work of the poor all around the world. Taxation is the only way to get some of that money back (ie, take a large corporation with very wealthy execs and a work force that uses hundreds of millions of dollars each year in government aid). But not in America.

I can't say I support what they do at Wikileaks with releasing some sensitive information. But neither can I support what credit card companies do on a daily basis. For those companies to take a sudden moral stance and cut off funding to Wikileaks is ridiculous. And bringing it full-circle, it is intelligent activism once again working there: using drone computers of a sort to overload those company computer systems and effectively shut them down. The impacts in this documentary and with the wiki hackers are small. But they certainly paint a nice picture of how far a little non-violent and intellegent acvitism can go.