Blog 11 Wk 8 The Yes Men

As far as I can tell, the Yes Men seem to be primarily concerned with bringing accountability to big corporations. The Yes Men, represented in the film by Mike and Andy try to highlight the greed and injustice of globalized corporations who seem to place more value on money than on human life. The two corporations focused on in the documentary were Dow chemicals, whose plant in India caused devastation on local citizens, and Exxon whose practices are parodied by Andy and Mike by creating candles that seemed as though they were created from the body of a human janitor. The yes men operate through the use of websites, which seem as though they are a part of these global corporations, which occasionally allow the Yes Men to speak as representation of these companies at large events, or as shown in the documentary directly to BBC world news. Once they are given access to these podiums, the Yes Men use parody to subtly (and comically) convey their point. Their goal is to overturn the myth propagated by the Media that if left to own means, unobserved, and unaccountable corporations will basically behave well. As one commentator puts it "unjust problems will solve themselves if ignored." The Yes men are anti-globalization activists who try to prevent the absurd ideas prorogated by some corporations from being accepted as real by the public.