Civic Muscles

That’s the thing about a cult. What’s shocking to outsiders is normal to insiders.
—Mike Bonanno

We have to exercise the muscles we either don’t have or that have atrophied or something, a civic muscle, a thrifty muscle, a generous muscle.
—Lili Taylor

“Andy is about to go on live television in front of 300 million people,” Mike narrates. Meanwhile, Andy sits in the BBC World studio in Paris, green screen behind him and coffee cup in hand. All those people, Mike continues, as if letting you in on a big secret, “They’re gonna think that he represents one of the largest companies in the world, which he doesn’t, and that’s why he looks so nervous.” On cue, Andy looks into the camera and asks, as if he’s nervous, “Should I typically just look right into the camera?”

Coming early in The Yes Men Fix the World, which premieres tonight on HBO, the act is convincing. At least it’s convincing enough to the BBC interviewer. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno—the Yes Men—are used to this sort of response, having found over years of activist performance art that people are inclined to believe some outrageous lies, say, corporations mean well, or governments tell the truth. The Yes Men use this predisposition in conference goers, academics, and executives, in order to execute newsworthy hoaxes and so expose hypocrisies.

This is how Andy has landed at BBC pretending to be a Dow Chemical representative, announcing that the corporation is at long last doing the right thing with regard to the 1984 Bhopal tragedy—also known as “the world’s greatest industrial disaster”—when a pesticide plant exploded and some 50,000 people were killed, and another 1000,000 left sick for life. Back then, Mike explains, the plant was owned by Union Carbide, since bought by Dow—but no one ever “took responsibility,” meaning that the company, under whatever name, focused on keeping shareholders happy. Then, when UC CEO Warren Anderson said, “I am confident that the victims can be fairly and equitably compensated without an adverse material effect on financial condition of Union Carbide Corporation,” only the victims felt hardship.

Now, when Andy tells his interviewer that Dow will pay some $12 billion in reparations (by liquidating UC), something else happens. As the news circulates quickly via Reuters and Google, Dow stock prices plummet and in Bhopal, where residents have gathered to commemorate the disaster’s 20th anniversary, some brief elation erupts. When the hoax is revealed (almost as quickly as it spreads), the Yes Men are troubled by the accusation that they’ve perpetrated a cruel hoax not only on Dow but also on the Bhopal victims. Even as Andy protests, “We may have given them two hours of false hope, but Dow has given them 20 years of suffering!”,  the Yes Men travel to India, specifically, the Sambhavna Trust Clinic, established to treat victims, who suffer to this day. Here they learn their action was appreciated—at least by the people they interview—as a means to draw attention to their plight.

Alternately funny, incisive, and ridiculous, The Yes Men Fix the World goes on to offer other examples of similar performance-arty actions and inappropriate reactions. Much like Andy and Mike’s first film, 2004’s The Yes Men, this one makes visible (and jokes about) what they do: here they appear in an underground cave with a TV and a computer, monitoring the world that needs fixing. Then, they report, they set up a fake website (say, dowethics.com) and wait for someone to call them to present a paper or give an interview. This presentation aims to expose corruption, selfishness, and irrationality in corporate behaviors.

While it’s worth noting the apparently weak-to-nonexistent background checks that precede such requests, such sloppiness is only the point of departure: as Andy and Mike make clear, their audiences are repeatedly gullible and frighteningly ready to go along with any bad idea, including their version of the Dow Acceptable Risk scheme (“Whichever way you do this,” observes an audience member, “You’re going to cost some lives. But if you’re going to make some money in the process of it, then it’s acceptable”), and their version of Halliburton’s “SurvivaBall,” a body suit that blows up like balloon and protects the wearer from all manner of chemical and physical assaults. It’s as silly as it sounds, and conference attendees start seeing applications for terrorist attacks. “Instead of freaking out,” Mike sighs, “They just took our business cards.”

So okay, Andy and Mike reason, “Maybe making fun of stupid ideas was a stupid idea.” Maybe corporations are cults, as they seem, and there’s no way for insiders to see outside their faith in greed and “freedom” (espoused by several talking heads here, whose green screen backgrounds are transformed into Tom of Finland S/M scenes and   The yes Men go at the problem from the opposite direction, landing in post-Katrina New Orleans and passing themselves off as HUD representatives, promising to do the right thing by public housing, rather than selling out the “tossed salad” of damaged housing to private companies. To the Yes Men’s surprise, the executives, even hearing they’ll lose money on this deal, applaud the fake initiative.

This would seem better news if they hadn’t also cheered Ray Nagin’s tone-deaf pledge, “I believe in a market-driven process.” But… maybe the profits are not the only reason to do something. Maybe, as Andy and Mike hope, if another model is made available, people—even politicians and corporate officers—would choose it. Or maybe, free markets are so deeply entrenched in cultural, political, and economic assumptions that the cult of corporations is headed to an end like Jonestown’s. The world they display seems at once fixed (as in, rigged) and in dire need of fixing.