Yes Men

I truly enjoyed watching Yes Men in class last week. I had no idea that anyone could carry out such an elaborate impersonation of cooperate representatives without going to jail. The point of the film that really stuck with me was that the other people at the various conventions they went to, not only didn’t kick them out, but reacted as if the information they were presenting was totally acceptable. If the top employees of one of the largest global corporations in existence can accept the concept of a phallus shaped observation monitor that sends out electrical impulses to various workers, the problems this world has to deal with are much worse then I had previously imagined. At least the Australian students in the film reacted with anger and frustration to the group’s presentation. If they hadn’t I would have walked out of that film severely depressed. I was also impressed with how much preparation and work the ‘yes men’ did in order to accomplish their stunts, and it was also nice to see them get financial sponsorship. The Yes Men have taken the concept of the culture jam and perpetuated it into live action/ the real world. As opposed to taking things out of context and creating a new meaning, they dive into the thing itself and show how ridiculous the concepts that powerful people are willing to put up with. How conformity of their cooperate world has taken away every last bit of free thought away…The people they interact with at the conference do not actually matter to them, it’s the stories in the papers, the publicity, the film that get their message out to the general public. The conference attendees are just puppets that dance along to their plan. As far as this assignment I’m not quite sure where to begin, but I usually don’t get struck with an idea for a project until the due date is fast approaching, so I’m not too worried about. I did create a culture jam for Shannon’s intro to editing class, and it came out pretty good in my opinion. I remember it took me like twelve straight hours of editing to complete that assignment, so I will try to plan better for this one. I appreciate the fact that the yes men are actually making a difference with their work and I am inspired to once again create something that I feel strongly about, I’m just not quite sure what at the moment.