Yes Men Busting corporate balloons

Nov 20, 2009 (The Berkshire Eagle - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
BERC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- GREAT BARRINGTON -- It's easy enough to pull off a prank -- just ask punk'd specialist Ashton Kutcher or the jackasses of "Jackass" -- but it's something else to pull off a brilliantly conceived prank that exposes corporate folly and hypocrisy. For that you need to call in the Yes Men, political activists, performance artists and gleeful satirists who trigger their pranks at prestigious corporate forums and then return to their Yes Man caves to watch them explode on the Internet.

Their exploits have been captured in the film "The Yes Men Fix the World," an Audience Award winner at the Berkshire International Film Festival last spring that will be shown tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington as a fund-raiser for WBCR-LP, 97.7 FM, the noncommercial community radio station based in the town. The film will also be shown at Pittsfield's Beacon Cinema as it opens its doors for business today.

The Yes Men will host a Q & A at the Mahaiwe after the screening and then they'll be the guests of honor at a party at the radio station in The Granary at 37 Rosseter St.

The film hits the ground running with a jaw-dropping prank triggered when Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno create a Web site called Dowethics.com shortly before the 20th anniversary of the horrific Bhopal disaster at a Union Carbide chemical plant in India and wait for

someone to bite. The BBC takes the bait, inviting the boys to London for a live interview, during which Andy announces that Dow, which bought Union Carbide several years ago, will set up a $12 billion fund to compensate victims and clean up the site. The statement is world-wide news, and before Dow exposes the hoax, its stock plummets as shareholders fearful that the company's noble act will lower their dividends bail out.

"We realized several years ago when we posed as World Trade Organization representatives at a (2000) legal conference in Salzburg that we had tapped into something that hadn't been fully explored, the willingness of people to believe what they are told, no matter how absurd, if it is said by someone powerful," said Bonanno in a telephone interview of the Yes Men strategy. "It's not that people are stupid, just gullible. If Andy or I were in an audience in which people identified themselves as from Halliburton or Dow, we would believe it too. It's not so much that disbelief is suspended as much as that disbelief comes pre-suspended these days."

Bonanno laughs often, perhaps amused more by the absurdity of corporate behavior as by the pranks of the Yes Men. (Bonanno is not the real name of the native of nearby Loudonville, N.Y., but the Yes Men use so many names in the course of their exploits that identity becomes less important than the cause of the group, which is a loose alliance of activists around the globe.) He observes that the Yes Men don't pretend to be movie actors, adding that "It really helps to be a bad actor. It makes us more convincing."

Bonanno and Bichlbaum masquerade as Halliburton executives in the film when they attend a conference on global catastrophe in the hope of selling their "Survivaball," a giant orb with feelers that ostensibly enables its wearer to waddle through disaster. This sequence is hilarious, but also sobering when the Yes Men are approached by a potential buyer who thinks the wealthy may be interested in purchasing Survivaballs to protect them from terrorists.

"That is something that fits into today's mentality, when profits are to be made even if the world suffers as a result," said Bonanno. "New Orleans is another example. Conservatives have starved government until it becomes dysfunctional, which not surprisingly erodes the public's confidence in government. Then when government fails in response to something like Katrina, the private sector moves in to make a profit."

Bonanno and Bichlbaum visit New Orleans in the guise of HUD officials announcing a public housing project that will short-circuit the private sector profiteers. The pair are criticized by the media for unfairly raising the hopes of victims through their pranks, but in visits to Bhopal and New Orleans we see them praised by residents for drawing attention to corporate unfairness that the traditional media has ignored.

Journalism has fallen short in confronting corporate malfeasance, asserts Bonanno, "because being 'fair and balanced' requires that if someone says something that is clearly right, then you have to include a statement from someone who is clearly wrong. We need an objective journalism that engages reality and tells who the winners and losers are."

The Yes Men made news only last month, when Bichlbaum posed as U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesmen announcing that the chamber would end its opposition to legislation addressing global warming. The chamber was outraged and so is Bonanno.

"The U.N. says that 300,000 people have died from climate change already, and there is no push for change because there is no way to make a profit from it," he declared. "Profit from destruction is more desirable, and in that contest the Survivaball becomes normal."

Bonanno is not concerned that the success of the film, a hit at the Sundance Film Festival last winter, will make it difficult to pull off future corporate pranks because it isn't about him and his accomplice Bichlbaum.

"We're trying to grow the Yes Men ranks a little and pass the torch on to others," explained Bonanno. "And we probably won't see a massive change in human behavior."

The movie concludes with a call for Americans to fix their nation by rising up against corporate corruption and dishonesty, and although only tea-partiers seemed moved to action these days, Bonanno is optimistic that the call will be answered.

"We have a president who might do some progressive things but needs a push," said Bonanno. "The New Deal didn't come about until millions of people hit the streets and gave FDR the support he needed. There is an opportunity now to get things done, and now is the time to do it. I'm confident that it will happen."

To see more of The Berkshire Eagle or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.berkshireeagle.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Berkshire Eagle,
Pittsfield, Mass. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For
reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or
847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group
Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

For full details on (BERC) BERC. (BERC) has Short Term PowerRatings at TradingMarkets. Details on (BERC) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.