Documentary's Awkward Turn by Jason Middleton

Author:Jason Middleton [Middleton, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art, Film & Video, Social Science, Popular Culture, Media Studies
ISBN: 9780415721073
Google: 51tYngEACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-15T05:19:18+00:00

I. The Joke’s on them

The comedy of deception is a tactic employed by activist filmmakers and performers across the political spectrum. On the conservative right, we find the prankster James O’Keefe, who gained notoriety by making a sting video at an office of The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a network for community groups that advocate for low-income families on social and political issues. On the left, The Yes Men are a duo of activists who satirize the ideology of neoliberal economists by posing as spokespersons for the World Trade Organization and companies like DOW Chemical in order to infiltrate professional conferences and media appearances. O’Keefe’s ACORN video, created using an approach that appropriates elements of Baron Cohen’s and The Yes Men’s styles, set in motion a wave of legislative responses that ultimately led to a federal defunding of the organization.28

In a scene early in The Yes Men Fix the World, the duo hijack an international finance conference in the guise of corporate spokesmen for DOW Chemical. Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum (itself a pseudonym) in character as “Erastus Hamm” gives a lecture and slide presentation titled “Risk, Reality, Reason: End-to-End Standards and Acceptable Risk.” He explains that DOW has developed software called Acceptable Risk, a “market-smart risk calculator” that allows the entrepreneur with a product that is potentially dangerous to human life to “find out what risks are or are not acceptable from a bottom-line business perspective.” Bichlbaum proceeds with a presentation that establishes the precedent for their risk calculator in cases such as IBM’s sale of punch card technology that greatly assisted the Nazi genocide (replete with a slide featuring an offensive caricature of an elderly Jewish man). He argues that although this business transaction had an immense cost in terms of human life, its huge profits make it a “golden skeleton” in the company’s closet—the sort of enterprise the acceptable risk calculator will help contemporary entrepreneurs assess in terms of their market value.

The Yes Men’s stated intention in scenes like this is to shame the audience attending the presentation; “would this,” they ask in a voiceover that precedes the scene, “make the bankers think twice?” Toward this goal, they employ rhetorical strategies that follow Sedgwick’s principle: “Without positive affect, there can be no shame: only a scene that offers you enjoyment or engages your interest can make you blush.”29 When Bichlbaum discusses IBM, the film cuts to reaction shots of attendees who appear bewildered and somewhat incredulous. To put the largely European group at ease, however, he offers for their enjoyment a joke at Americans’ expense: “Now, you may have heard the joke—how many Americans does it take to screw in a light-bulb? Twelve—one to climb the ladder and eleven to file the lawsuit.” The film cuts to a shot of several attendees laughing heartily, evincing the type of relief that Freud suggests humor may enable. Freud writes that humor finds “a means of withdrawing the energy from the release of unpleasure that is already in preparation and of transforming it, by discharge, into pleasure.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.