Fixing the world, one prank at a time

“I just spent 24 hours in jail,” Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum explained. He had been arrested the day before while attempting to “take by assault the United Nations” during the recent Summit on Climate Change. Bichlbaum plunged into East River with over 20 other volunteers to surround the UN as a statement about the inaction concerning climate change policy.

The Yes Men, led by Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, are activists who embrace civil disobedience as a means of exposing corporate injustice. They have been hoaxing corporations by impersonating and infiltrating their inner circles for about a decade, and now the how and why of their elaborate pranks are detailed in a new documentary, “The Yes Men Fix the World.”

In one sequence, posing as risk management consultants, the Yes Men pitch the concept of the “golden skeleton.” They pretend to argue that it is acceptable for companies to have an embarrassing past of harming people in pursuit of profit, so long as the liability is outweighed by the profit—asserting that if you must have a skeleton in your closet, you should do your best to make it “golden.” This demonstration—complete with life-sized golden spray-painted skeleton—is outlandish, but quickly becomes sobering when one realizes that representatives of corporations are unquestioning of this Machiavellian concept.

Though all charges were dropped at his arraignment, Bichlbaum was cheery during the interview for another reason—the exposure. “Because of my arrest, CNN put a big piece on the prime-time news,” he explained, “and that’s actually the principle of civil disobedience, which is to get attention for things that might not otherwise get attention.”

In the spirit of the movie, the Yes Men chose to continue to maximize Bichlbaum’s most recent arrest. “We’re going to pick his stuff up at the 13th precinct and make a bit of a show of it, I think,” Bonanno said.

One hour later, they descended on New York’s 13th precinct with a small team of followers, which included a cameraman and two trombonists. After filming a celebratory trombone fanfare and post-jail interview, the group led an impromptu parade down 21st Street.

Though the Yes Men’s tactics have been criticized as irresponsible and lacking in objectivity, Bonanno argued that they are no less spectacle-oriented than the mainstream media—they just don’t hide it—and that their tactics are not only more honest, but can ultimately lead to a more productive way of looking at information.

One of their major hopes is to engage young people with their tactics. Bonanno cautioned that if young people “don’t start getting out in the streets and demanding, absolutely demanding, that our government do something,” they will be left with the problem. “The things that are going to happen are going to be incredibly nasty," he concluded.