The Yes Men Fix an Interview

What do you get when you cross Borat with Michael Moore? You get The Yes Men, a team of prankster-activists who have become infamous for "stealing" the identity of corporations and using the media to make ironic and outrageous announcements in the companies' names.

The Yes Men are Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum who, along with a largely unnamed army of helpers, stage politically-charged pranks meant to reveal the greed and hypocrisy of a market-driven culture. The two are stars of a new film called The Yes Men Fix the World, in which they document the political and corporate hacks they've staged.

And they've staged some doozies, the latest of which saw The Yes Men hit with a lawsuit by the US Chamber of Commerce after hosting a fake press conference in Washington, DC, where they posed as Chamber representatives and said the business group was reversing its controversial stance on climate change legislation.

The stunt was nothing compared to what's probably The Yes Men's best-known action: posing in 2004 on the BBC as representatives from Dow Chemical and taking full responsibility for the Union Carbide tragedy in Bhopal, India — one of the world's worst industrial disasters. Dow quickly denied the story, but the company's stock took a $2 billion hit.

The Chamber and Dow episodes are just two of the hilarious and thought-provoking moments in The Yes Men Fix the World, a fascinating, funny and inspiring film. We can only imagine how the Chamber of Commerce situation will play out in their next movie.

Despite a very busy week lawsuit and film opening, Tonic caught up with Mike Bonanno for a quick interview as he drove from Maine to Boston.

 

Tonic: How do you describe your kind of activism to someone new to The Yes Men?

Bonanno: There's no easy way to describe it. We like to think of it as creative activism — it's using performance and masquerade to tell the truth about where big business is trying to tell us lies.

At one point we called it identity correction. Where criminals use "identity theft" to prey on the powerless and make money, we prey on the powerful and use their identities and position to get the word out about something that needs to be fixed.

We do it by impersonating these companies, going to meetings or conferences, and making announcements on their behalf that they're doing the right thing, or that that they're doing the wrong thing and are going to correct it.

 

Tonic: Is it easier for people to hear your message because you deliver it in a way that's entertaining?

Bonanno: The thing we do that's different from traditional kinds of activism is that it's extremely funny to watch, in a way that's more engaging than other forms of activism. That's why we think it reaches people, but that's not to say it's better. The other ways are also necessary. We couldn't do the funny stuff if the traditional activism wasn't happening.

 

Tonic: Do you call them "pranks" or "actions?"

Bonanno: Lately I've been calling them "stunts," because of the work involved. "Direct action" probably fits best. "Pranks" tend to get written off. These are more like serious activism that happens to be funny.

 

Tonic: How long does it take to prepare an action?

Bonanno: It depends on the stunt. The Chamber of Commerce action didn't take that long because we had help from a really well organized group of activists, so that took maybe a week of planning.

Positive announcements like that, saying that a company or organization is doing the right thing, take less time. We just look at what we want them to do. It’s very genuine — you reach into your heart and include things that we know we need to do to fix the problem, but lack the political will to act on.

The more black humor/satire takes a while to prepare. Like when we went to the National Petroleum Council (NPC) conference as Exxon and announced Vivoleum — that takes longer and more preparation. We made a tribute video ... made candles that the audience held while we watched it, that all took time to prepare.

And the Survivaballs take time to design and make.

 

Tonic: You and Andy are the public face of The Yes Men, but it seems like you have some helpers. Like all of the people in the Survivaball suits.

Bonanno: We sure do, we have a lot of help!

Sal Salamone, a costumer, created the first Halliburton Survivaball. Building and augmenting the design has fallen into the lap of a group called Make Fun, a costume group in Brooklyn. They're making the fleet of Survivaballs for the Balls Across America campaign. We have a pretty much full time ball wrangler, Larkin, who's job it is to make sure they're in the right place when they're needed.

 

Tonic: In the movie there are several scenes of you and Andy talking to groups about outrageous things, like Vivioleum. Usually the crowd just sits there and nods. How do you keep from getting upset at the people who don't react?

Bonanno: We understand that it's human nature not to react, and not make a scene. We know from the Milgram experiments in the 1960s that people follow the lead or the directions of the people in charge. We also know from group behavior experiments (and real life events like Kitty Genovase) that people are less likely to react or intervene in a case of violence. It's called the Bystander Effect.

It also has to do with the environment that we're presenting in. It's one of decorum, the people are meant to remain composed, businesslike.

That’s also why it’s not very dangerous — it’s actually very safe. We've never been attacked. Even the time a conference organizer dragged us away, it was still subdued because he was concerned about his image.

Also, we don’t have a reason to be angry with the people in the room, because those people are us. We need to remember to focus on the targets that matter, e.g. the corporations or the government that’s propping them up.

The other thing is that people politely applaud at the end, but it’s not the enthusiastic rallying cries, which is what we get when we do the positive announcement.

For example, in New Orleans, when we announced that HUD was going to reopen the public housing, instead of tearing it down as previously announced, the contractors in the audience were really enthusiastic, even though it meant less work for them. They responded because it was the right thing to do and their impulse is to help.

We think that people have the basic right impulses. We need to fix the way the system is set up, to bring it back in sync with our morals and those basic impulses.

 

Tonic: You are heroes to a whole generation of up and coming activists. Who were your heroes?

Bonanno: I had a lot of inspirations. I enjoyed satire. Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. And there's a great book called Pranks that came out in 1989, published by Re/Search. It's a compendium of people engaged in pranks, some political and I was especially struck by those. Also, groups like the Yippies,  and the Situationists, were also really compelling.

 

Tonic: In the movie, it was striking to see how nervous Andy was before the BBC interview. It made you both seem very "normal" and regular, which in turn makes it seem possible for "regular" people to do things like this. How do you encourage people who want to get active?

Bonanno: Well, we tell people to get out there and do whatever you can do well.

Find orgs that work on the issues (you) care about, join them, and participate in actions. We all need to become activists if we’re going to make changes. We give away all of our secrets, which aren’t really secrets at all, at Challenge The Yes Men. Some of the things we do take a bit of technical skill, but really anyone can do this. Beyond Talk is another great organization that if you enroll on the site will tell you where and when to go to participate in actions to protest climate change. All of the traditional methods are important! Letters to elected officials, talking to neighbors, taking to the street — in order for democracy to work people need to be super active, in any way they can.

Our democracy is broken. Corporate money and lobbyists need to get out of Washington. Corporate control of the media needs to end because it eliminates our ability to make decisions on key issues, because it basically insures that the profit motive is what drives reporting. So people need to get involved, and demand changes.

 

Tonic: You dress up as other people for your job  — what do you do for Halloween? Do you dress up?

Bonanno: On Halloween we wear our Survivaballs! Seriously, [we join] a big Halloween parade in New York City in our Survivaballs.

The weird thing, in America we have one day a year where we dress and pretend to be other people. We have fun playing a tiny lie.

Unfortunately Big Business and the government are like wolves, colluding to dress up like sheep all the time, telling us massive lies, like it’s good to have insurance companies in our health care system. It's so ridiculous — why do we need middlemen skimming money and creating incentives for us not to get better?

The lies are out there, the sheep's clothing. So on Halloween we like to ask, how we can try to pull their costumes off for the rest of the year?

 

Tonic: Any final thoughts, or ideas to plant?

Bonanno: Yes, I want to say something about freedom. People criticize us because we tell small lies, but they are (small lies) that reveal bigger truths. And our lies are revealed instantly.

Meanwhile, corporations and lobbyists are telling huge lies, like government sponsored healthcare will take away our freedom, which is a major lie. You have more freedom if you have health insurance.

There are so many examples of where smart government — not more, but smart — can increase our freedom. We have to reexamine our priorities in how we make our government work for us, and not just for the richest.

That’s why it’s so important to get out there, get involved, and ask, “Who really benefits from this?” That’s how you get the truth, and freedom.

 

For more information about the film, plus theaters and showtimes, visit The Yes Men Fix the World's website.

 

Images and production stills courtesy of The Yes Men.