The Yes Men: A DVD Review

Once again, boy am I glad I joined Netflix!

What do you get when you pair two effeminate liberals, Michael Moore, Greg Palast and a website critical of the World Trade Organization? Answer, you get a rather silly documentary called, “The Yes Men”.

The film begins with the two protagonists explaining how the “Yes Men” came to be. They began their pseudo-activist careers by designing a mock George W. Bush website that was hypercritical of him and his policies as then Governor of Texas. In the short sequence of clips, President Bush says that there should be, “limits to freedom,” that, “there is a lot of garbage on the internet,” and finally, referring to our heroes, “these are garbage men.”

After having stuck it to Bush, they were asked to design a similar website, this time taking aim at the World Trade Organization. The premise was the same in that they would employ the same look of the real WTO site while highlighting information about what the WTO has done to ravage Third World countries far and wide. The hook here is that because of this site and it’s striking similarity to the real thing, they end up getting invited to give lectures as representatives of the WTO. This is where the plot thickens; our two boys take the opportunity at these lectures to present an over-the-top satire of the WTO in an attempt to expose them for the uncaring weapon of globalization that they perceive them to be. Hilarity ensues.

I’ll give them this, “The Yes Men” was better than “Fahrenheit 9/11” but that isn’t saying much. I have no doubt that some of the information they present in the film is true but it is hard to take it seriously when it’s being delivered by the likes of Moore and Greg Palast, author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” The anti-corporation documentary aptly named, “The Corporation” suffers from the same problem. The message may be dead on but the messenger lacks any kind of moral or intellectual authority.

There are three main parts to “The Yes Men”. In the first bit of satire, the main player dresses up in a gold suit with a large phallic TV protruding from between his legs. The gag is that he’s saying that this get-up is the wave of the future in manager-worker relations. In the plant of the future, workers will be lightly shocked into complicity by managers that can watch a global workforce from anywhere in the world. If you think you are losing something in translation don’t worry, it isn’t much better when you see in the movie. The gag is very adolescent, especially for two people whom appear to be intelligent adults. The audience at the lecture in the movie didn’t really get it either.

The second bit takes place on a college campus. They present to the unsuspecting students that in order to feed starving people in the Third World, they will attempt to recycle food waste. They show a computer generated cartoon of an American eating a McDonald’s hamburger, going to the bathroom and then via an underground pipeline, depositing the waste and reforming it into hamburger patties in some Arab country. Naturally the students react with angry questions, name-calling and eventually thrown projectiles as has become the staple for collegiate debates these days (pies, shoes, etc). This was actually funny to watch. The reactions of the idiot students to what is most assuredly an absurd proposal almost makes the movie for me. This bit is mostly a send-up of the idea that Americanization and globalization is McDonalds-uber-alles. That is to say that McDonalds is iconic of America coming into a country and stripping it of its cultural identity and replacing with consumerism and a well-stocked marketplace.

Lastly, the film crescendo’s with a conference in Australia where the heroes expose the WTO as inhumane and a tool of the corporate elite. In this lecture they make up a story that the WTO is shutting down and restructuring to incorporate UN human rights mandates. The funny part is the audience completely agrees with them.

In the final analysis the “Yes Men” acknowledge that they are just mere pranksters and that those who combat the corporations with lawsuits and such do the real work. This is from there website, “Traditional forms of action are more important than ever today: street protest, direct action, rallies, politics, lawsuits, letter-writing… All this and more is needed for change to happen.”

These fellows are biased and they admit as much on their site. “Kerry is part of Western civilization. His intention isn’t to smash the state and destroy the government; his sole real concern for this world isn’t the profitability of the mighty; his concept of justice and right doesn’t come from another world altogether, one in which earthly laws and concerns have no relevance. The fundamentalist terrorist who seemingly won the election is very different in all three respects.

If Kerry had won, we who care about people might have had some hope of affecting his approach, perhaps second- or third-hand, via those who have his ear. With Bush, we have to focus on the preliminary step of getting this plague out of office.”

They have every right to be biased and it doesn’t really take away from the movie. Nobody could have sat down to watch this thing and expect these two gents to be anything but dyed in the wool liberals. However, after an hour and twenty minutes of this nonsense all one can say in reference to their efforts to the expose the WTO is, “What have you really accomplished?” How much more aware of what the WTO has wrought are people now that you’ve made this movie? The answer is not much.

Overall it’s an OK movie. It’s like “Jackass” for the intellectual crowd. College kids will love it and think it actually means something. Most others will never know it ever existed. And the WTO will keep on keeping on, doing what it does, barely acknowledging that these guys exist. Frankly, I preferred “Super-Size Me”.