"The Yes Men"
In 1999, two young men, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike
Bonnano, started an anti-GWBush web site that closely
mimicked the wannabe president's own. The successful
satire earned them the funding to create another site
called www.gatt.org that almost mirrors – except for
the facts given – the website for the World Trade
Organization. The spoof site so closely resembles the
WTO's that the anarchistic activists get invited to
high level conferences around the world as
representatives of the organization they imitate and
subvert in "The Yes Men."
Documakers Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith,
following the underground success of their previous
film, "American Movie," turn their sights to
world-class issues as they team up with the Yes Men,
Andy and Mike an company. The two young mavericks
already entered the pantheon of good-natured anarchy
with their site www.gwbush.com that looked and felt an
awful lot like the now-president's website
www.georgewbush.com. Music icon Sergio Mendez (of
"Brazil 66" fame) funded the next Yes Men venture as
they tackled the World Trade Organization.
The WTO used to operate under the moniker GATT
(General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) but changed
its name a few years ago. The shift from their website
www.gatt.org to www.wto.org left a vacuum (and site
name) that fell into the hands of the Yes Men. Andy,
Mike and their consultants constructed a new site
under the GATT banner that looks awfully like that of
the WTO and began putting forth faux policy statements
as the World Trade Organization. Many visitors to
their site believed it to be real and the Yes Men did
their best to answer any questions – usually with
their own twist.
The spoof gets taken up a notch when they are invited
to a tariffs and trade conference in Salzburg, Austria
as representatives of the WTO. Donning cheap suits and
a laptop full of Yes Men propaganda, they enter the
conference and begin to extol many outrageous policies
– including the individual selling his vote to the
highest bidder. None of the intelligentsia attending
the meeting appeared to think that anything was amiss
with the crazy policies put forth.
The Yes Men's next big hurdle was a conference in
Finland, but not before one of them, Andy, is invited
to appear on CNBC Marketwatch Europe as a WTO
representative. After the broadcast that was seen by
thousands, maybe millions, they head to the far north
of Europe to promote a first-world leisure suit that
would allow corporate executives the ability to
monitor their third-world workers via electronic
implants in the laborer's shoulder. The fact that the
monitor attached to the golden suit is a three-foot
long phallus and establishes a Big Brother kind of
control on the workers did not faze the attentive
audience.
Encouraged by their success, the Yes Men accept the
invitation to come to Australia for a big accountant's
conference. They want to do a good job down under so
they prepare their speech – which condones recycling
first world human waste to be used as food for the
people of the third world – and give it to a group of
college students in Plattsburg , NY. The students are
the only group to react negatively to the outrageous
policies the Yes Men put forth.
The final act of the Yes Men takes them to Australia
and, in a change of plans, they announce that the
World Trade Organization is being disbanded because of
its unfriendly policies. The news release goes to over
25,000 journalists world wide and the statement is
even debated in Canada's Parliament! On the heels of
their success, the Yes Men search for other wrongs to
right and new anarchistic challenges.
"The Yes Men" starts off as a bit of a goof as we are
given their history and the beginnings of their plan
to mimic and subvert the WTO. They are pleased with
the results of their false web site and numbers of
hits it gets but the meat of the movie lay in the
legitimate invites to conferences, lectures and TV
news programs in France, Austria, Finland, Australia
and the United States. The humor, and jaw-dropping
policy statements the Yes Men make as
"representatives" of the WTO, is the draw to the film.
The sheer chutzpah that Andy and Mike, with their
supportive cronies, exhibit as they make their
outrageous statements is a pleasure for the anarchist
inside me. That their faux lectures are taken
seriously, even applauded, speaks for their audacity.
"Tell a big lie often enough and people will believe
it as truth" is the premise they follow and the team
of subversives stick to it. In the end, you laugh with
them and laud their efforts on changing the world,
even just a little, for the better. I give it a B+.
For more Reeling reviews visit www.reelingreviews.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 38770 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1326378 X-RT-TitleID: 1136342 X-RT-SourceID: 386 X-RT-AuthorID: 1488 X-RT-RatingText: B+
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