When we watched “Yes Men
Fix the World”, I did not know what to expect. But when we began watching it, and
I began to get the general gist of the film and what these men were doing, I
was suddenly aware of a new sensation that was perhaps different from that of
my peers.
Although I will take the
time to applaud these men for their cleverness and the well-thought out
presentations they were managing to create within the web of corporate PR
representatives and customers, I felt a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach.
Although people may admire these men for what they are doing for the
underrepresented victims of corporate mistakes, I cannot shake the fact that
these men are lying. They’re lying to the public, they’re lying to the victims,
they’re lying to the press on a national scale; and, worst of all, they’re
lying to the victims of these events. Personally, I found their work intriguing,
but at the base, it goes against all I stand for. They are incredibly
convincing actors, though sometimes their ideas that they sell to the corporations
seem to ridiculous to be believable. Their schemes are entertaining and over
the top.
Though I do not agree with
how the victims of corporate discord are being treated, I feel like they
deserve more respect than to be given false hope through an actor wearing a
suit. Although the victims in Bhopal say that they took the joke with humor, I
feel like not all of them feel like that; and personally, I feel like the Yes
Men did wrong on the part of the victims by even raising the idea of a hope for
justice of their plight. It was cruel to raise even one hope, simply to have it
crushed by the reality of a hoax committed by a pair of activists.
I feel like these men
addressed a very good issue within all our projects. It’s the prevalence of a
capitalistic ideology. We make money. We spend money. We create means for
money. It’s a process that will never
die. All of the issues within class: globalization, the industrial food system,
farmer’s rights, or genetic modification; These are all driven by the idea of
economic impact. Money is a god in our reality, and its right that the Yes Men
acknowledge this.
It is important that you are weighing the the relationship between means and ends in addressing large, complex questions. It is reasonable and appropriate to question wrong-doing in the name of right-doing.
ReplyDeleteThe only new question that I would pose concerns your final economic assessment. I have no crystal ball and have no certain idea about what the future will hold. Most of human history did not feature a cash based-economy, it is a new thing from the long haul point of view. This suggests to me that it is not an absolute certainty for the future.
Does your sense that capitalist ideology will never die mean that you do not see any hope in trying to address issues or are you commending the Yes Men for trying to address them, despite their inappropriate methods/ethics?
These are huge, complicated issues, of course.