My Life Is a Culture Jam

What do the Yes Men and found footage films have in common?

That’s an interesting question. After all, the Yes Men are a group of activists, who use humor and impersonation to bring global issues to light. The documentary we watched focused on their impersonation of the World Trade Organization. These impersonations showed the absurdity of certain WTO policies and practices.
Found footage films take pre existing footage and cut it in a way to add new context. This come sometimes be political (as with culture jamming) or can sometimes simply explore the subtext in a film—Dave Monahan showed a film in Intro to Editing that showed a single scene from To Kill a Mockingbird that was edited in a way that emphasized every single frame. These can range from films like Big Screen Version, which shows the oversaturation of media by cutting clips from Fox News into a new beat, to The World Wastes Andy Hardy, which shows an oedipal subtext to the Andy Hardy film series that stars Mickey Rooney.

So, what do these really have in common?

Rather than taking footage that is preexisting and creating new subtext, the Yes Man take an existing organization and alter it by taking part in it in order to emphasize a different truth than the one presented by the actual WTO. It’s the closest thing to a real, life culture jam. Rather than cutting together footage of the WTO, the Yes Men research the existing organization and taking a role in it that parodies the organization.