The Yes-Men: the activists of the future
Behind this name which seems left a bad parody of legendary the American
supermen, hides an incredible collective of activists who cease since a few years to handle and ridicule some of the more
great media of planet.
The documentary one of Chris Smith (The Yes-men, 2004, 83 minutes.) is with the Web site of the collective (theyesmen.org) the best means of knowing the delirious but relevant intrigues of Yesmen.
the principal specialty of Yesmen is to succeed in being made pass for their worse enemies:
Representatives of OMC or multinationals, men
political republicans (...) in order to trap the most recognized media, which it majority of time see only fire there. The adventure of Yesmen starts in
1999, when Bonano and Andy Bichlbaum develop a false site Web of OMC (GATT.org). At the end of a few days, the trap starts to function and Yesmen receives e-mails of the four corners of the world
requiring of them to take part in various
conferences as a representatives of OMC. Andy Bichlbaum is a remarkable actor: with the serious larger, it parodies the speech of OMC in front of
hundreds of people which are persuaded that they deal with true door word of the institution. And nobody, in spite of the exaggerations more the mild mutters, realizes that it is about an impostor! At the time of a conference in Finland in front of
of the hundreds of people, Bichlbaum tears off his custom to reveal a gilded molding combination on which is fixed a screen allowing supposedly to the heads of undertakings to remotely control the work of their working. If the assembly on is well surprised by this demonstration, nobody dares to call in question the identity of Bichlbaum and everyone believes that it is really about a representative of OMC! And the following day, the
Finnish press most naturally reports of the world the news proposals of OMC concerning the control of the remote workmen thanks to this combination revolutionary. As they explain it in the documentary, the objective of Yesmen is not only to mislead the a few hundreds of people present at this type of conferences but also to trap the media which will diffuse their exploits without the knowledge. There is unfortunately not only the Finnish daily press which was victim of these brilliant impostors… Yesmen also took in their nets the BBC. Here still the starting point was the creation of a false Web site; that of the company Dow
Chemicals, person in charge for the terrible catastrophe of Bhopal (India) which in 1984 had cost the life 18.000 people, following the explosion of a factory of chemicals. The BBC falls into the trap and returns in contact through this false Web site with Andy Bichlbaum who is made pass for a door word of Dow Chemicals. In front of million
televiewers , Bichlbaum declares in the name of Dow Chemicals that the company from now had decided to assume the responsibility for the
catastrophe (it with what it refused since years) by pouring 12 million dollars to the victims. As of the following day, the action of Dow Chemicals
dropped significantly and the management of the firm contradicted the declarations while the BBC presented its excuses not to have
checked information which it had disseminated to million televiewers.
However, if the actions of these heirs to the Fluxus group or the Situationnisers are of a great originality, the documentary one of Chris Smith
lacks a little dynamics. For any statement, it is not really in The height of the work of Yesmen. These impostures with the paces mild mutters are however resulting from a scientist mixes madness and the serious one and pose true questions about the inconsistencies of liberalism and passive obedience of the people to his anarchistic development.