 | Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette ( roseyv) wrote,@ 2007-07-25 14:57:00 |
|
Somebody Tell Me Again Why We’re Supposed to Like The Yes Men?
You know what would have been really hilarious? Is if, instead of just those dumbass gullible BBC journalists being fooled, there had been people in Bhopal who had heard this fake story, and they’d bought it too.
Oh, wait. They did.
What a bunch of yokels!
Allow me to confess up front that I hated “The Yes Men,” (the movie, that is) and that consequently I formed kind of a low opinion of its creators. I wish I could say either that their most recent stunt either elevated them in my esteem, or that it was an aberration of some sort; a well-intentioned backfire that should not be allowed to mar a history of otherwise spot-on social commentary. Unfortunately, it seems to be about par for the course, at least as far as I can tell from having seen the movie, which I assume (perhaps wrongly) contained some of their best material. Granted, it’s been a couple of years since I saw it, and I will admit that my memory of it is a bit sketchy, but let’s just take a look at a few of the highlights.
First, the boys create a cartoonishly extreme right-wing nutcase character, get him booked on a TV show frequented and watched mostly by rightwing nutcases, and had him spout all kinds of rightwing nutcase propaganda. The token liberal-leaning guy on the show thought he was nuts! But all the rightwing nutcases agreed with him. Because apparently, rightwing nutcases like rightwing nutcase ideas, but more liberal types? Don’t!
Film at eleven!
Then, they put together a PowerPoint presentation showing the benefits of selling shitburgers to third-world countries for human consumption. At the last moment, it turned out they weren’t able to take this presentation anywhere where the idea of selling human shitburgers could even conceivably be taken seriously (wherever the hell that might theoretically be), so instead, they went into a college classroom filled with starry-eyed, idealistic twenty-somethings, several of whom were actually from developing nations themselves, and pitched the shitburger idea to them, and the kids got really pissed off! Thus proving … something.
Oh! And who could forget the time they went to some tiny, innocuous Scandinavian country and addressed a roomful of polite, barely-English-speaking middle management types, while dressed in a giant dick suit? Those guys looked really confused! That’ll teach ‘em to – be … well-mannered, bewildered-looking Danish actuaries.
Then, for the piece de resistance, our intrepid do-gooders traveled to Australia, where they pretended to be from (if memory serves, and it may not) the World Trade Organization! They invited people who had nothing in particular to do with the World Trade Organization to attend a fake lecture, where it was explained to them that, for reasons of which they were already no doubt well aware, the WTO was a complete failure, and that they were going to dismantle it. People were happy! They applauded! They thought it was a great idea!
HAH-hah! Fooled you! These young scamps aren’t really from the WTO at all! And it’s business as usual in the world market, boys.
And then some of them cried.
I guess my point is, if I saw your head off, it doesn’t really matter how utterly convinced I was that it would make your migraine go away. It doesn’t even matter how deeply I empathized with your pain. The end result is, you have no head, and I’m going to prison or a locked mental ward.
So what, exactly, have I accomplished?
Of course, it's certainly possible that there’s a far more complex and scathing sort of satire at work here than I am personally capable of appreciating, but if so, somebody’s gonna have to walk me through it slowly.
You know what would have been really hilarious? Is if, instead of just those dumbass gullible BBC journalists being fooled, there had been people in Bhopal who had heard this fake story, and they’d bought it too.
Oh, wait. They did.
What a bunch of yokels!
Allow me to confess up front that I hated “The Yes Men,” (the movie, that is) and that consequently I formed kind of a low opinion of its creators. I wish I could say either that their most recent stunt either elevated them in my esteem, or that it was an aberration of some sort; a well-intentioned backfire that should not be allowed to mar a history of otherwise spot-on social commentary. Unfortunately, it seems to be about par for the course, at least as far as I can tell from having seen the movie, which I assume (perhaps wrongly) contained some of their best material. Granted, it’s been a couple of years since I saw it, and I will admit that my memory of it is a bit sketchy, but let’s just take a look at a few of the highlights.
First, the boys create a cartoonishly extreme right-wing nutcase character, get him booked on a TV show frequented and watched mostly by rightwing nutcases, and had him spout all kinds of rightwing nutcase propaganda. The token liberal-leaning guy on the show thought he was nuts! But all the rightwing nutcases agreed with him. Because apparently, rightwing nutcases like rightwing nutcase ideas, but more liberal types? Don’t!
Film at eleven!
Then, they put together a PowerPoint presentation showing the benefits of selling shitburgers to third-world countries for human consumption. At the last moment, it turned out they weren’t able to take this presentation anywhere where the idea of selling human shitburgers could even conceivably be taken seriously (wherever the hell that might theoretically be), so instead, they went into a college classroom filled with starry-eyed, idealistic twenty-somethings, several of whom were actually from developing nations themselves, and pitched the shitburger idea to them, and the kids got really pissed off! Thus proving … something.
Oh! And who could forget the time they went to some tiny, innocuous Scandinavian country and addressed a roomful of polite, barely-English-speaking middle management types, while dressed in a giant dick suit? Those guys looked really confused! That’ll teach ‘em to – be … well-mannered, bewildered-looking Danish actuaries.
Then, for the piece de resistance, our intrepid do-gooders traveled to Australia, where they pretended to be from (if memory serves, and it may not) the World Trade Organization! They invited people who had nothing in particular to do with the World Trade Organization to attend a fake lecture, where it was explained to them that, for reasons of which they were already no doubt well aware, the WTO was a complete failure, and that they were going to dismantle it. People were happy! They applauded! They thought it was a great idea!
HAH-hah! Fooled you! These young scamps aren’t really from the WTO at all! And it’s business as usual in the world market, boys.
And then some of them cried.
I guess my point is, if I saw your head off, it doesn’t really matter how utterly convinced I was that it would make your migraine go away. It doesn’t even matter how deeply I empathized with your pain. The end result is, you have no head, and I’m going to prison or a locked mental ward.
So what, exactly, have I accomplished?
Of course, it's certainly possible that there’s a far more complex and scathing sort of satire at work here than I am personally capable of appreciating, but if so, somebody’s gonna have to walk me through it slowly.
