- The Guardian, Monday 17 August 2009
- The Yes Men Fix the World
- Release: 2009
- Countries: France, Rest of the world, USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 90 mins
- Directors: Andy Bichlbaum, Kurt Engfehr, Mike Bonanno
- Cast: Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno
With the polemical energy of Michael Moore and the brass neck of Ali G, the Yes Men are "identity correction" artists who pass themselves off as the corporations you love to hate. By building a fake World Trade Organisation website, they earned invites to speak at business shindigs, and used the platform to expose the suits who run the world. In their 2003 documentary the breathtaking claims they made – always delivered with a straight face to a straight-laced audience – included the good (that in order to put people before profit the WTO was disbanding itself), the bad (that the north was wrong to wage a war on American slavery) and the ugly (that McDonald's was to process faeces from western toilets to provide cheap hamburgers for the developing world). Time and again, business jargon and the authority of invented status secured a respectful hearing. In The Yes Men Fix The World, which has just opened in Britain, one Yes Man gets on BBC Worldwide as a Dow Chemical representative, and announces the firm will fully compensate all those injured in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy. Instead of being angry at having their hopes falsely raised, many victims supported the hoax, which wiped $2bn off Dow's share price before being exposed. The Yes Men's sheer balls have impressed many reviewers. But although framed as the theatre of the absurd, their vigilante justice has a serious point – to remind us of the inhumanity of a system in which those in charge carry on as if they were simply following orders.
Staff
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