Three Monkeys Identity correction - Yes Men style. Interview with Andy Bichlbaum.

Identity correction - Yes Men style. Interview with Andy Bichlbaum.

Author: Andrew Lawless

It’s disconcerting to have a conversation with Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, through no fault of Bichlbaum’s. Well, then again, it is his fault. After having seen The Yes Men movie, and Bichlbaum’s various poker faced media stunts, there’s always the suspicion in the back of your mind that he’s somehow, to put it politely, pulling your leg. This is the man after all who spoke to a conference on International Trade in Salzburg, claiming to be Andreas Bichlbaeur from the World Trade Organisation, and suggested that “violence is acceptable in banana trade so long as prices stay low and trade is free; that the siesta in Spain and the long lunch in Italy should be outlawed in the name of standardized business hours; and that a 'free market' in democracy should be encouraged by allowing the sale of votes directly to the highest bidder through Voteauction.com”, without any of the experts present realising that it was all a gag.

In reality though, Bichlbaum’s comedy is one of context, and he’s deadly serious when talking to the media about the specific issues raised by the Yes Men’s pranks, such as the absence of corporate responsibility and the unthinking acceptance of ‘free trade’ ideology (well, maybe not ‘deadly’ serious. His conversational tone is good natured and cheerful).

“It’s good for popularising things, –says Bichlbaum, talking about the satire on display in The Yes Men, - and getting people interested in a subject. It’s a good entry point for people into topics that are very heavy and serious, and that require serious investigation. We do hope that people, by going to see our film, get interested and start to realise that there’s something grotesquely wrong with the world right now, and the way it’s being run. Hopefully they’ll be stimulated to look into it in other ways”.

The Yes Men started when Bichlbaum met with fellow media activist Mike Bonanno and, as detailed in the film, they started setting up websites for what they term ‘Identity Correction’, where “honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else”. An example was www.gwbush.com, which they setup in conjunction with Zack Exley who owned the domain name. The site looked to all extents like Bush’s official site, but with some important differences, explaining the reasons why Bush wanted to become President: to help the rich at the expense of the poor and the environment, etc.

From there the idea of www.gatt.org was born. A website that outlined what the World Trade Organisation is really all about. As a shocking proof that style does indeed triumph over substance, researchers around the world arrived at the site, and because it looked like what a WTO site should look like, they missed the parody (Sample headline on the site: “Much has been made lately of IBM's participation in the Holocaust. Indeed, IBM proactively and creatively helped the Nazis identify all of Germany's Jews, which in turn made possible the biggest slaughter of all time. Today, however, another Holocaust is taking place: it goes by the name of 'distrust of big business,' and it is every bit as terrible as the last”). Invites poured in from conferences seeking representatives from the WTO. And from there, it was only a hop, skip and a jump to WTO representative Hank Hardy Unruh (a magnificently convincing Bichlbaum) standing in front of a conference in Finland, talking about how the issue of slavery in the United States (“the involuntarily imported labour model”) should have been left to market forces to sort out, while proudly displaying the WTO’s management leisure suit – a gold glitter suit with a ridiculous inflatable phallus shaped monitoring unit.

The Yes Men is a hilarious and disturbing film, perhaps as all good satire should be. At various conferences throughout the world, the pranksters deliver increasingly absurd and offensive ideas, but face no dissent. The question, though, may arise: are they satirising the WTO, or the audiences who fail to get the joke? This writer certainly laughed in disbelief at the Finnish audience who failed to be offended. This though is not the intent behind the pieces, according to Bichlbaum: ”We’re not satirising just the WTO We’re satirising the whole way people don’t seem to question the foundations of current corporate globalisation, and the way it works. People seem to just accept it, without thinking. They figure that someone’s in control, and figuring it all out. One of the points of the film is to suggest that there might not actually be anyone seriously thinking about the consequences of all this, or at least not as many as we assume. We assume that because the economy is being run this way, there must be a good reason for it. It must have been figuring it out. If we can propound these extreme versions of this stuff, and all its absurdities, and nobody notices, then maybe people aren’t paying enough attention to what’s going on in the world. It’s not that we’re satirising the audiences in the film, but pointing out a major failing”.

It could be suggested, watching the film, that the audiences involved were merely being polite. That silence doesn’t necessarily mean acceptance. “It could be politeness, – Bichlbaum responds doubtfully. – You do see in the film that nobody has any questions, at the end of the talk. What you don’t see in the film was that we spent the whole day with the people at the conference, from the time of the lecture through to the evening. We went to lunch with them, and then dinner with them, and several times we asked people if there was anything in the lecture that disturbed them or bothered them, and nobody really found any problems with the content of the lecture. People were amused by the gimmick, thinking it odd that the WTO would use such a thing, inflating a giant yellow phallus in front of hundreds of people, but when we questioned them about the slave labour questions, as to whether they minded any of that, nobody really objected. The only real negative reaction was from one woman who was appalled that we seemed to be saying that only men could be factory owners, because of the shape of the leisure suit. The footage of all that exists but we didn’t use it because it wasn’t good quality, the cameras couldn’t be too obtrusive”.

The gags employed by Bonanno and Bichlbaum have academic roots, borne lightly though Bichlbaum stresses. On their site they provide info and links on precedents from Aristophanes through to the Situationists, but they’re also happy enough with a simple laugh leading to greater awareness on an issue. “It [The Yes Men] all evolved through accident and inclination, – shrugs Bichlbaum, - When we try to look back now at what might have influenced us it’s obvious that there are some theoretical links. We both read French absurdism, Da-da-ism, Surrealism in college or before. It’s obvious that some of the same concerns were around back then, shortly before the second world war, in the case of Da-da. At points when things have been falling apart in history people have had some of the same reactions”.

The obvious question, from those reared on the concepts of regulation and law and order, is: why haven’t the Yes Men been put behind bars yet? Surely in the Bush era it’s impossible to get away with the sort of the pranks that they have! “It’s not clear what’s illegal in what we do, – laughs Bichlbaum, - and what isn’t. We’ve asked a lot of lawyers, and usually before we do anything we ask some lawyers what the possible consequences of our actions are. Generally the answer is that they don’t know. Some respond ‘don’t do it, it’s too dangerous’, and others have said ‘well, it probably won’t result in anything too bad happening’, and we’ve followed the advice of the latter, and gotten away with it [laughs]. It’s probably not illegal. The real crimes are being committed by our targets, and those are very real, demonstrable crimes. The ones that we’re committing are victimless, and probably not even crimes”.

Do the Yes Men then wonder about their effectiveness? The lukewarm response from the corporations targeted, and the lack of legal action might suggest that there’s a lack of concern on the part of the high and mighty (the WTO’s sternest response to their impersonations so far have been to call them “deplorable”). “It’s a good thing to worry about, and we do sometimes question how effective we’re being, but the truth is that the lack of reaction is probably showing the opposite, – Andy responds, explaining - There’s this thing called a SLAPP suit in the United States – a strategic litigation against public participation. It’s when activists target companies in various ways, as happened with the McLibel case, and companies take spurious law suits against them. The companies don’t necessarily expect them to stand up in court, but it ties the activists up in red tape. That’s the way the McLibel case began, and surprised McDonalds by turning into a really big thing. In our case we’ve managed to drum up enough media attention from any threats we’ve received to make companies wary of attacking us in that way". For example George W. Bush attempted to get their www.gwbush.com site shut down, blundering in his own inimitable way “there ought to be limits on freedom”, and in so doing created mountains of negative press coverage. "The WTO have said this explicitly", confirms Bichlbaum, "speaking to a journalist, who asked 'why don’t you go after these guys in court?’, they said ‘ it will just get them more attention than they’ve already got’.With the Bhopal thing – he continues - on the BBC, it’s almost certain that Dow won’t come after us because they just don’t want any association between Dow and Bhopal in the same sentence, anywhere".

The Bhopal stunt could well be considered the high point of the Yes Men’s career (though subsequent to the film) to date, when Bichlbaum, in the person of "Jude Finisterra", spokesperson supposedly for Dow Chemicals, managed to announce live on BBC that Dow had decided to take full responsibility for the Bhopal disaster, and were committed to providing full compensation and medical costs to the survivors, along with a full clean up of the toxic area. Quite an about turn for a company that had previously denied any responsibility for the disaster, and which had termed a derisory $500 compensation package per survivor as “plenty good for an Indian”.

Over 16,000 people died in Bhopal when a Union Carbide plant released methyl isocyanate gas into the air, while, through cost cutting measures, various safety and alert systems had been disabled. Dow Chemicals bought Union Carbide in 2001, claiming, as it continues to do, that it bears no legal responsibility for the Bhopal disaster. Legal experts disagree, and there are various outstanding criminal actions underway, both in India and in the US. Conditions in Bhopal continue to be extremely hazardous to locals. When Finisterra’s statement was read on the BBC, and picked up by various other news organisations, Dow’s shares dropped, losing 2 billion dollars on the German stock market, before rebounding later that day as the hoax became apparent. The cautious press release issued by Dow seems to back up Bichlbaum’s guess, that legal action is the last thing Dow wish to engage in, where Bhopal will be once again brought back to the public’s attention.

In an inspired adjunct to the initial prank, the Yes Men, through their site www.dowethics.com issued a press release claiming to be from Dow revealing the hoax, and detailing exactly what they, as Dow Chemicals, would not take responsibility for. The statement ended with the following: “Dow shareholders will see NO losses, because Dow's policy towards Bhopal HAS NOT CHANGED. Much as we at Dow may care, as human beings, about the victims of the Bhopal catastrophe, we must reiterate that Dow's sole and unique responsibility is to its shareholders, and Dow CANNOT do anything that goes against its bottom line unless forced to by law”, which, at the end of the day, seems to be as realistic an account of the situation as Dow could have written themselves.

There was criticism of the prank on the part of some Bhopal activist groups, suggesting that the hoax had given false hope to Bhopali victims. The Yes Men have apologized to the victims for any suffering unintentionally caused, but remain convinced of the positive effects of the stunt. “The concrete thing that that event produced was over five hundred articles being written about the situation in Bhopal, many of them in the United States where most media generally didn’t mention the Bhopal anniversary, and most Americans don’t know where or what Bhopal is. They certainly don’t know that Dow hasn’t cleaned up the site or compensated the victims adequately. That’s what it accomplished, raising consciousness – says Bichlbaum, while adding – “the joke is the vehicle to get the information into people’s minds, through the press, of course. The articles that appeared had to explain the background, in addition to the joke itself. They had to explain what Bhopal was, what activists are demanding, what the point of the joke was. If people then went to our website, they would have found clustered across our front page “Click here for information about Bhopal” and we had links to Bhopal.net and to Bhopal.org so people would find out from activists in Bhopal what the situation is, and how they could contribute both financially and practically to the fight for compensation for victims of the disaster from Dow. We did get to meet the activists recently and they did tell us that there was a big rise in donations afterwards. So at least that’s one concrete result".

To many, the success of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 last year, both critically and commercially, marked a high tide mark in the popularity of documentary/activist movie making. In an interview last October with film maker Jennifer Abbot, director of The Corporation, this magazine questioned whether the possible re-election of George W. Bush would affect popular activism. I put a similar question to Bichlbaum: is there evidence of activist fatigue? After all there were huge efforts made last year against Bush, and yet he still won. “This whole interest in documentaries, and corporate issues, is largely a result of Bush being in office, and people being desperate for information. Information that the media were not providing. That of course now continues [laughs wistfully]. The only silver lining to the situation is that it’s starkly clear to people that things are dreadfully wrong, and that things have to change. I think people are searching now more than ever to find information, and to find out how they can get involved and have an effect. If Kerry had won, who knows what the situation might be now. When Clinton won, when Clinton was president, a lot of incredibly bad things were happening, and a lot of people were lulled into complacency, and didn’t realise perhaps that Iraq was being bombed continuously, and that the welfare system in the United States was being eviscerated. At least with Bush in office it’s dreadfully clear [laughs], and it’s worse than it would be with Kerry, but people are aware of it. There is a certain feeling of powerlessness perhaps, but overall I think the effect has been more energising”.

Paradoxically, the more successful the film, the harder it will be for the Yes Men to get away with stunts, but it’s not something Bichlbaum is too concerned about: “We haven’t had any trouble yet. We don’t think we will have any really. We’ll see. The scene with Barry Coates in the film was demonstrative of that [activist who, despite having taken part in a heated discussion with Bichlbaum in his WTO guise, failed to recognise him in the flesh]. He’s an extremely intelligent and insightful person, very aware and awake to things. It’s just that when you see someone in one context you just don’t bother thinking ‘are they really someone you’ve seen in a movie somewhere?’. We’re just programmed that way. It probably won’t be a problem, but if it does become one, there are surely many, many people who actually have an acting background who could do this as well as we do, or probably better. There’s also fake beards etc. or whatever would do the trick”.

The good news is that, whatever the success, the Yes Men are far from alone, as Andy explains, “we’ve been in touch with all sorts of people doing similar things, or interested in the same issues, for a very long time. We talk with people about collaborating on various things in the future”.

And when asked about future pranks, reasonably enough and with a laugh that hovers between deviousness or delight in upcoming events, he keeps the details to himself, leaving us to watch this space…