Yes Men

Okay, what a terrific film. I was disappointed that we could not finish watching it, but I was left intrigued as to how they recycled footage. The Yes Men incorporated the reuse of footage in a highly creative and innovative matter. A opposed to simply taking video clips from various sources to create something akin to found footage, they incorporated it into a website template. Their website offers a critique of the owner (more specifically, the World Trade Organization). By duplicating their website, the Yes Men provide a damaging critical deconstruction of their organization. What was shocking to me is that they uncovered the apparent fact that many people actually do not read what is on the WTO’s web page. It is amazing that simply by making something appear to be authentic to the original source, how easy it is for people to be fooled. I mean, it is hard to fathom how if a group was going to invite an important speaker from the WTO, they would not read the website at the very least to gather information to ask him about, or in this case to make sure that the site is truly authentic.

As a film, Yes Men is brilliantly constructed. The personal story of the two people was quite interesting to me, as I love their bold determination to achieve their goals. The film never loses sight of the fact that they are doing something important, despite their often ridiculous and rather humorous methods of achieving it. Above all else, it is simply a really cool story of how a small group of people managed to take material, re-contextualize it, and then release back to the public as a satirical farce. It just saddens me as to how it relatively easy it was for them to do it.