After watching the Yes Men, I really liked the way that the Yes Men presented themselves. Mike and Andy provided humor and dramatics to prove their point that the World Trade Organization was not helping other developing countries to improve. I liked how they would try to pretend they were representatives of the WTO and speak about them and how their audience would never react to the outrageous comments they made. I think they were not very effective, though, because many of their audiences did not react to their claims that the WTO was actually trying to make money by taking advantages out of poor countries. They even made outrageous costumes that were really silly to prove their points that the WTO was a silly organization. The Yes Men would wear business suits and would lie that they were representatives of WTO while making outrageous comments about WTO at the same time. I thought this was really funny, but I probably would not support them because I think lying does not help with their ethos. Who would be willing to believe the Yes Men and support them if they use lies as a technique to advocate their opinions?
I think appearance is very important for a protest group to advocate their opinions against someting. If a protest group seemed very professional and looked like they know what they are talking about, people would most likely take the protest group seriously and be willing to support them. However, if a protest group uses a silly and laughable appearance, most people would not take the protest group seriously and would most likely laugh off the protest group’s opinions.
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4 comments:
I really like the fact that you pointed out that they were ineffective because even though they made outrageous statements, no one ever responded. How odd is it that people who are "educated" at these conventions never react to these crazy claims? If you ask me, these people were probably just in it so that their company could send them on a liesure trip to Australia or wherever the "Yes Men" happened to be.
//P.No//
I agree with mostly everything you said, except the part that no one ever responded. This is largely true, which is sad, but you can't forget the college students. They not only responded to their claims, but they were infuriated by them. I think this gives a lot of credit to the Yes Men because it proves that not all of their presentations failed.
Appearance really played an important role in getting The Yes Men "in the door" at conferences and on TV. It is amazing they were able to convince a national TV station like CNBC to let them on the air, and perhaps it's revealing about how mass media works- not always as thorough as it should be in its effort to continuously produce new stories and footage.
I agree that a lot of people probably laughed off the protest because of how they presented themselves more like comedians (at times) than protesters. However, I give them props for getting the attention of the media through their behavior.
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