Is satire more fun than sincerity? Maybe. Just watched The Yes Men last night — and am v. inspired to be someone other than myself. For a good cause, of course.
If you haven’t yet heard of The Yes Men: A few boys whip up a mock WTO site, then start getting invitations to speak from organizations that think their site is the real WTO site.
The boys say yes, of course, and go speak — arguing that abolition wasn’t necessary since the free market woulda solved that problem anyway, extolling the benefits of having a vote-selling system, advocating the embedding of electrodes into overseas workers’ shoulders for better monitoring.
Aside from one inquisitive college audience, all the other groups listen to The Yes Men seriously — and respond not with outrage, but with polite applause and enthusiastic handshakes.
I was feeling a lil down last night, and was thinking maybe I’m watching too many depressing documentaries (An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car, Black Gold, etc. etc.) — but this film cheered me up. So much so that I checked out The Yes Men FAQ online after the film and giggled over that too:
How do you feel about adding new falsehoods to the news environment?
The news is already full of hoaxes; the only reason ours stand out is that we don’t do them for profit.
BTW, gatt.org — the mock WTO site through which The Yes Men got invites to speak as WTO representatives — is still going strong. Top news item on the page: “WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Market For Africa”
Maybe I’ll become a Yes girl –
