The Yes Men

The 2003 documentary film, The Yes Men, directed by Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith follows two unlikely masters of satire on a mission to refocus the global view of The World Trade Organization (WTO). Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum are Yes Men. The WTO is making it easier for rich countries to outsource their work to poor countries causing the poor countries to get poorer and the Yes Men don’t want to see the populous stand for that. They want people to be appalled by the things they bring up in their presentations IE. Cost effective slavery and a series of tubes that transports North America’s fecal matter to Africa and turns our excellent excrement into hamburgers. The Yes Men want to bring the truth about what corporations like this and others are doing through “Identity correction”.

Yes Men is a mix between cinema verité and an expository documentary. We are seeing the film makers and they are interacting with the camera but they are still trying to change our opinion on the WTO. It is shot through the perspective of Mike and Andy.

I thought the films use of humor was brilliant. They were able to bring out all the points they wanted to and still be hysterically funny. For example the suggested climax of the film was when Andy brought out his gold spandex management/leisure suit in front of an audience of unsuspecting businesspeople. It was adorned with a gigantic phallus shaped screen and still taken semi-seriously. It was the fact that these people thought that there was no way this was a prank of any kind that was surprising. They thought it was impossible that they were getting made fun of simply because of the forum they were in and the Yes Men proved them wrong. Another scene was days before Mike and Andy went down to Australia and were talking about if satire was, “more fun”. They came to the conclusion that I the majority of the people who watched this film came to and that is that not only is satire more fun, it’s more effective.

Yes Men is one of the better films that makes people question the ethics behind an organization like the WTO. It’s important that people don’t agree with a corporations that have questionable agendas. The fact that people can join the yes men and help correct the identities of other wrongful businesses is fantastic. I hope the next yes men does just as well as this one.