Film Review: "The Yes Men Fix the World"

by Emily Gertz

categories: Activism, Art, Imagining the Future, Jobs & Economy, Media, Popcult

Published October 04, 2009 @ 08:11PM PT

The Yes Men travel a fine line where art, social change, and sophisticated media hacking intertwine. In their entertaining new film, "The Yes Men Fix the World," duo Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno also do water ballet -- in between documenting their shrewd, blackly humorous pranks, which expose how ready corporations are to capitalize on human suffering.

In this, their second film, the Yes Men turn the humor on themselves as well. Between recounting their hoaxes, the two men splash around in a wide expanse of water, dressed in full suit-and-tie corporate drag, asking themselves (and the audience): Why engage in either art or activism, when so little seems to change as a result? Are we just a couple of insignificant drops in a sea of inhumanity?

In their most famous media hack to date, the duo set up a slick faux-corporate website called dowethics.com. A couple years later, in 2004, an invitation to appear on the BBC News arrived in email. Bichlbaum, posing as a Dow Chemical spokesman named "Jude Finisterra," told a global audience of 300 million (as well as a wholly taken-in BBC crew) that Dow would pay $12 million in reparations for the 1984 pesticide leak at a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, that killed and sickened tens of thousands. (Dow bought Union Carbide in 2001 but has not made any move to either compensate victims or clean up the factory site.)

Dow's market value plunged by $2 billion in less than a half hour after the broadcast -- a handy demonstration of how much the current incarnation of capitalism values profits over ethics.

Lately the Yes Men have turned their attention to corporate culpability and profiteering in the face of climate change. The film follows them to a major petroleum industry convention. As representatives of Exxon, they present a new biofuel called Vivoleum, made from the victims of climate change. They hand out candles made of the fuel to a largely unquestioning audience and light them, before being ushered out of the hotel as trespassers.

And at a "Catastrophic Loss" conference, the pair introduce the SurvivaBall, "an advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even when climate change makes life as we know it impossible." It's an orb-shaped inflatable suit that will allow those who can afford it it to survive the severe floods, searing heat, water shortages and other nuisances climate change is likely to cause.

Far from finding the idea outrageous, conventioneers eagerly hand over their business cards and chat about the SurvivaBall's profit-making potential.

At this point in the film, Bichlbaum and Bonanno conclude that it's "going to take more than two guys with cheap suits and fake web sites to fix the world." They enlist friends to help create and distribute a fake edition of The New York Times. Headlined "Iraq War Ends" the faux-Times features upbeat stories like, "Nation Sets Its Sights on Building Sane Economy," and "Nationalized Oil To Fund Climate Change Efforts."

Seeing that "the New York Times parody really inspired people," the pair realize that along with using their talents to highlight corporate malfeasance, they can also create realistic visions of what a more just world could look like.

This is the answer -- or at least one answer -- to the question of why to make art and work for social change, and particularly why to mix them together. The Yes Men afflict the powerful by exposing the inhumanity at the core of unfettered capitalism so skillfully and hilariously that they -- and we -- come away inspired to fight another day.