MayesFilmAnnotation6

Meredith Mayes Annotation #6 10/17/2011 The Yes Men Fix the World 1,484 words

__The Yes Men Fix the World,__ directed by the Yes Men, otherwise known as Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, was released in 2009 as a follow-up documentary to their first film, __The Yes Men.__ The film revolves around the pivotal point that money and greed are ruining our world both ecologically and culturally, and this fact must be more publicized than it already is. The documentary is more lighthearted than the average sustainability-crisis documentary, using humor to drive their story forward. The story is moved along by the main pranks that the duo pulls, beginning with the impersonation of a DOW chemical executive and moving into the impersonation of representatives of high ranking officials’ aides. The stunts they pull are often incredibly ridiculous, as is the case with the Yurt and the personal safety device.

Enmeshed in the film is the matrix of issues that make the solution of the issue complex and convoluted. To begin with, Americans, companies, politicians and the rest of the world are culturally ingrained to believe in and want money. Further complicating this belief is the economic think-tanks that constantly reaffirm this belief. These people are interviewed on the news and testify before Congress, enforcing this loop at every level. The politicians have been convinced that regulation in the market is bad for capitalism and bad for America, and so deregulation has been in vogue, which is detrimental, as corporations have no conscience to keep themselves in check. This is even without high ranked political positions going to highly biased people, such as former CEOs of oil companies gaining a seat as the head of the Department of Energy. Obviously such a person would protect their former interests. In the economic sphere, one problem is that corporations go to banks for sponsorship of their projects. No bank is going to sponsor a project with a lot of potential for backlash, which increases the incentive for companies to move into countries where there is an easy out or an easily exploitable system in case of a corporate disaster such as the one in Bhopal. This further creates the problem where money is then valued more than a human life. This can be shocking to anyone not directly involved with the benefits of that profit column, but to many it is viewed as the way things are done and will continue to be done, since the company needs those profits to survive. The legal system compounds the problem in the inequality of the justice systems across the world. One of the Yes Men told a joke at a conference: “How many Americans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 12, 1 to screw it in and 11 to file the lawsuit. How many Indians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 1.” Americans will sue over any threat to life or limb, but Indians do not necessarily have that power, especially poorer Indians against huge corporations. Organizationally, companies can pay think tanks to urge us to support the companies, and we believe them. Why shouldn’t we? After all, these are experts. But they’re paid to be biased experts, which should nullify their authority. But it doesn’t. Furthermore, companies can actually benefit from disasters that destroy the rest of us, by allowing them to snatch up contracting jobs and open up a new market, such as in New Orleans after the hurricane, where affordable public housing was destroyed for mixed income apartments, destroying many families’ still standing homes that they could not return to.

The film was fairly convincing in a few points. The most important of these points is how people reacted to their hoaxes. In the case of the people of Bhopal, there was much rejoicing when they found out that DOW would take responsibility for their actions, but stockholders would pull out of the company and cause 2 billion dollars of loss in23 minutes. When the hoax was exposed, the people of Bhopal actually forgave the Yes Men for raising awareness and exposing DOW’s ignoring of the people they had wronged. DOW spent recovered money on a PR campaign to fix their image instead of using that money to help the people of Bhopal. The other example was families in New Orleans who were being removed from their homes in the name of fixing up the city. When the Yes Men said they would do their best to create fair housing for them, they were overjoyed – and contractors agreed with them! When the prank was exposed, the people still weren’t angry because they felt that at least one group was trying to help their issues be heard and understood why what the government was doing was so wrong. Another point was speaking to experts on stocks and bonds and listening to a man trying to explain why it was bad to help the people of Bhopal. It was depressing to hear him prioritize the stockholder’s money over the quality of life of thousands of people.

The only unconvincing pieces of the film lay in the outrageousness of some of the statements. The first of these was that “We didn’t lie, we told the truth.” This statement came off as very arrogant, which deterred me from what Mike was actually saying. The Yes Men do lie, and they tell very big lies. They just use these lies to expose the truth. But they do get people’s hopes up and then have to admit the things they promised were not coming to the masses, which does come off as cruel. Also, the statement that greed destroyed New Orleans was a little too broad for my liking. There were many contributing factors to the ruination of New Orleans, including increased temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. I believe that an omission of supporting facts for the sake of comedic relief was also somewhat unwise. There was a long interlude with them swimming that could have provided a summary of information on the New Orleans topography and population. While that isn’t as humorous, it would provide more concrete facts on the topics discussed in the film.

The film assuredly targets many audiences, ranging from the high school to the upper levels of corporate management to the common man in moving the world towards change and away from greed. The two yes men, Mike and Adam, suggest that the only way to change the world can come from the people, the 99%, to borrow the slogan of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. People need to stop loving money more than their fellow man and have compassion for more than just immediate friends and family. Additionally, the country needs to move away from deregulation, ignoring those sponsored think-tanks, and begin regulating business again, holding them responsible for their actions and abuses.

Today, the affordable housing crisis continues to slow New Orleans’ recovery from Katrina. A report by Rachel E. Luft from Tulane University (found here: []) Many single mothers in New Orleans feel the sting of the loss of their housing, as the number of female headed households was doubled in New Orleans, in addition to poverty rate more than twice the national average. The homeless population since the storm has also doubled to approximately 12,000. Some feel that the storm isn’t the only one to blame though, since federal housing policy makes no exceptions for gender and race inequality, which most affects those that fall into the intersection of those categories, black women. Rents have risen 46%, making it difficult to pay rent, even if an apartment is to be found. Subsidized housing will never reach the pre-storm levels, which further hurts the ability of people to return to a home. Today, groups are trying to make the United States accountable for the unwarranted destruction of their homes on the basis of racial injustice.

But help may be on the way for these families, as reported by Doug MacCash at []. In February of this year, public housing was reopened. This public housing is “mixed income,” putting families paying subsidized rent next to those paying the market price in an effort to pull up low income neighborhoods and make them indistinguishable from the rest. New Orleans apparently has a history of housing reforms, such as the 1940s brick housing built to move the slums out of their status as fire-traps. While some claim that the repetition of the facades of these houses will ruin New Orleans, it can be argued that large quantities of homeless people would as well. It seems as though New Orleans has picked its poison, and now we must watch and see if this aid can cure the hostility raised in the last six years over the demolition of the old public housing and the displaced women and children who have struggled to get this far.