Political Activists Infiltrate Corporate America in Guerilla-style Documentary
Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, aka the Yes Men, are political
activists with an unorthodox approach to taking on crooked politicians
and corporations. These intrepid investigative reporters' M.O. is to
don suits and ties in order to infiltrate organizations with the aim of
exposing corruption from the inside out. They are even willing to pose
as captains of industry in order to call press conferences to make
groundbreaking admissions on behalf of powerful organizations.
For instance, take the case of Union Carbide/Dow Chemical, the
multi-national responsible for the leak of toxic fumes in Bhopal, India
which directly led to the deaths of over 25,000 innocent civilians. For
years, Dow refused to accept responsibility for the disaster, never
cleaning up the waste site or adequately compensating the victims.
So, the Yes Men sprang into action, mounting an elaborate hoax. One
managed to appear on TV on the BBC World News masquerading as a Dow
executive, and in that capacity he announced that the firm had finally
decided to admit its culpability in the slaughter and that it would be
unilaterally paying billions of dollars in damages.
Consequently, Dow stock temporarily plummeted until the hoax was exposed.
More recently, the Yes Men went to New Orleans in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina where one posed as an Undersecretary for a federal
agency, namely, HUD. This time, he informed the national press that
poor folks evicted from public housing would be allowed to move back
into the projects, even going so far as to stage a ribbon-cutting
ceremony. The displaced local folks were elated until FEMA intervened,
saying that no such measure had been authorized.
Sadly, in every instance of such trickery, the beneficiaries' joy is
short-lived, since the Yes Men are invariably exposed as complete
frauds. Nonetheless, they are at least able to embarrass avaricious
corporate interests by raising pointed question about the diabolical
methods of the rich and powerful in a very public forum.
See all of these irrepressible iconoclasts' audacious exploits
chronicled in The Yes Men Fix the World, an alternately hilarious and
sobering documentary co-directed by them and Kurt Engfehr. A
guerilla-style documentary which shows just how much havoc two guys
with cheap suits and fake websites are capable of wreaking in corporate
America.
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for
100+ publications. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online,
the African-American Film Critics Association, and the NAACP Image
Awards Nominating Committee. Contact him through NewsBlaze.
Breast Cancer News
Search News
Daily News
