| Throwing rocks is for amateurs... The Yes Men Fix The World follows two gutsy anti-globalization activists/pranksters looking to expose the true face of unregulated capitalism
B+
| THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD
March 5 - 11, Cinematheque
And I thought Sacha Baron Cohen had balls.
In The Yes Men Fix the World, activist-pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano punk the deserving in ways that humble both Borat and Bruno (or that grandstanding windbag Michael Moore).
Their most brazen stunt? Appearing on live BBC television, claiming to represent the Dow Chemical Company. In 1999 Dow acquired Union Carbide, the company behind 1984's catastrophic chemical spill in Bhopal, India.
The company wants to make amends, the Yes Man lies - it's finally going to give the victims the compensation they deserve. Not an hour goes by before the fraud is exposed, but in the meantime the company has lost billions in falling stock prices.
The point is made: the market actually punishes acts of corporate responsibility and conscience. The value of The Yes Men Fix the World is how it tears away the mask to expose the true face of unregulated capitalism.
It's something to witness. There is satire in this film worthy of Jonathan Swift, especially one outrageous scheme that seems inspired by his seminal mock essay, A Modest Proposal.
The Yes Men, if you aren't already familiar, are a loosely organized group of anti-globalization activists too smart for window smashing and rock throwing. Instead they create fake corporate websites, through which Bichlbaum and Bonnano get invited to major business conferences.
Once there, they pretend to represent various major corporations and give such presentations as how to profit from skeletons in your company's past. (This particular seminar culminates in producing an actual golden skeleton in a puff of smoke.)
But here's the genius of it - they have the corporate jargon and sales pitch down pat, and their audiences love what they have to say. One guy cheerfully calls the golden skeleton concept "refreshing." So your company may have been responsible for a few deaths. May as well find the silver lining, eh?
The only time an audience catches on is in Canada, where, to a crowd of oil and gas representatives, they propose a new form of biodiesel, made from human remains; the highlight is a "memorial video" of a supposedly dying janitor who volunteers to posthumously become a candle.
Hopefully this illustrates a genuine cultural difference; after all, our banks didn't fail, either. The American crowds, to be sure, lap it up and look ready for more. Do they realize how they look? Probably not - as Bonnano and Bichlbaum point out, the tenets of any cult make perfect sense to its members.
And yes, the proponents of unrestrained free-market capitalism we meet in this film really do sound cuckoo. There's archival footage of economist Milton Friedman, their spiritual leader, sounding like Gordon Gekko from Oliver Stone's Wall Street.
Does any of this really "fix" the world? Not really but, of course, that's not the real goal, anyway. What Bonnano and Bichlbaum do is demystify free-market economic theory in an age in which so many believe unquestionably in its value. They show that Adam Smith's "hidden hand" often extends a giant middle finger.
— Kenton Smith |
Uptown
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