When it comes to "stickin' it to the man" I tend to envision a Rage Against the Machine concert: a lot of anger, a lot of yelling, and if you saw Rage's show at Lollapalooza a couple years back (which I did), a lot of people throwing water bottles filled with urine. In the end the anger is what I tend to be left with when examining those in our world who take advantage of others for their own gain. But the reason I think I like this film is that it gave me a very different vision of how to deal with those feelings of injustice.
Instead of dealing with injustice purely by being angry the Yes Men give an example of fighting injustice with creativity. Instead of throwing rocks they throw ridiculous presentations at large corporate gathers posing as representatives of large (unjust) corporate entities. They make a spectacle, they make fools of themselves, and most importantly they tell the truth of how the corporation they are posing as representatives of goes about its business without sugar-coating it in justifying jargon.
There is little chance of standing up to injustice in our world in hopes of trying to overpower injustice. Often times injustice is what it is because of the power it has accumulated. But what injustice has in power it often lacks in true creativity. And THAT is an element we can take advantage of.
If this idea is interesting to you you might want to check out Walter Brueggemann's book "The Prophetic Imagination."
If you're interested in the Yes Men you can check out their website here.
