If you can't beat them, join them...Then beat them

A Discussion of The Yes Men’s Methods

After watching The Yes Men, Derrick and I were discussing the film and I was surprised to hear him voice skepticism over their culture jamming methodology. I was surprised because this was coming from the Adbusters reading (see his comment on my last post....) man who prides himself on once being called an 'urban hippie.’ His anti-capitalist heart seemed primed and ready to be swayed by The Yes Men’s agendas and methods, but alas it was not. Why? His blog will no doubt contain more details, but what I gathered from his argument was that he is skeptical of people who use hack methods that are hypocritical. For example, buying boxes of McDonald’s food, supports one of the corporations The Yes Men are attempting to expose. Another example is that of the dress shirt that Andy purchases at the thrift store in preparation for the Australia job. As you have probably guessed by now, I brought up my discussion with my dear friend Derrick Mund not to call him names, but to disagree with him.

First, I believe that hypocrisy can be excused in the name of irony, satire and the exposure of other (especially worse or more harmful) hypocrisy. I realize that sounds rather hypocritical, but I believe that the overall positive impact that The Yes Men have on their audience, the world and the targeted organization(s) outweighs the detailed wrongs in their methodology.

Second, it makes sense to fight fire with fire. In other words, it makes sense to challenge the leaders of the WTO and other organizations by infiltrating and becoming part of their system. These leaders are not going to listen to an urban hippie talk about their role in world starvation and paid slavery caused by unfair trade and globalization. Correction, an urban hippie would never even be granted an audience with these leaders in the first place, forget the listening part. The WTO knows there is dissent among the citizens of the world in regard to their policies; therefore, anyone attempting to challenge them outside of their niche would not be surprising and would likely be written off immediately. When you are challenging people who are so used to only listening to people just like them, pretending to be one of them to push your agenda is creative, innovative and most importantly, effective. Nothing proves this more than the first conference in Europe that The Yes Men hacked in which nobody from the audience seemed to notice Andy’s strange presentation. The same outcome occurred even with the absurd Finland slavery phallus presentation. He and these presentations were in context, in a medium that framed as legitimate, so who were the audience members to question the legitimacy of the WTO representative? Luckily in the latter case, questions were asked and The Yes Men got the exposure they wanted.

Finally, the bottom line here is that by using their own flawed methods, The Yes Men expose the WTO’s flawed methods and this is clearly effective. Effectiveness is key and in this case the moral implications of this effectiveness is more important than minor moral inconsistencies in methodology. What is one sweatshop T-shirt and $100 at McDonald’s compared to worldwide media exposure of one of the root causes of the problems? I do believe that individual social responsibility is important and can undoubtedly make a significant impact on the world if large scale participation ensued. I think that would be fantastic but even then, there will be hypocritical elements to your cause. Unless you have removed yourself from Society as we know it, you are immersed in, rely on and survive because of the system that you are trying to challenge and improve.

So Derrick, I think you are an idealist and to be honest we need more of you. In the mean time, we have people like The Yes Men- hypocrites who make an impact.