Yes Men Fix the World

The Yes Men’s critique of media is that the measures the government acts upon, especially in time of crisis, are monetarily driven and do not represent the whole truth of an event of a story. An example of this that the Yes Men uses throughout their documentary is Milton Friedman’s viewpoint of “Only a crises produces real change.” They critique this stance, illustrating that this ideal is in the minds, like Friedman’s, of those with a sole interest in monetary gain, regardless of the loss of life. Their pranks work as analysis and break down of what is really going on behind a situation and from that they are able to reveal the truth. For example, in the documentary the Yes Men posed as a member of the United States Housing and Urban Development that spoke at a convention concerning the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. He stated that HUD would begin to work on construction of affordable living for those who had lost homes in the disaster. Although this was not true and the Yes Men had no affiliation with HUD or the government of Louisiana, they were able to bring attention to what the government could have done for the people who had lost their homes. The Yes Men’s tactics of analysis brought out the truth behind this crisis. A critical concept that we have discussed that would be most aligned with the work of the Yes Men would be Karl Marx’s idea of False Consciousness, the notion that there is a separation of appearance and actuality. The Yes Men prove that there is this separation through their pranks and experiments where they constantly reveal the truth, the reality of False Consciousness, with what society sees through the media, the appearance.