Fear and Learning

Different kinds of scares fuel "Paranormal Activity," "An Education," and "The Yes Men Fix the World."

By what paranormal miracle do the Yes Men manage to stay out of jail? Seriously, these real-world satirists — a.k.a. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno — make Michael Moore look like a carnival sideshow squawker.

The pair’s second documentary, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” opens in Paris with chameleonic Bichlbaum’s most audacious hoax — impersonating a Dow Chemical bigwig before a BBC television audience of 300 million. Because this Yes Man dared to announce on live TV that Dow would disperse $12 billion to the people of Bhopal, victims of the world’s worst industrial accident, the corporation’s stock price fell by $2 billion in less than half an hour. And Bichlbaum and Bonanno are still not behind bars!

Alas, there’s nothing as uproarious in “Fix the World” as there is in the weakest scene of 2004’s “The Yes Men,” maybe because the boys have chosen to produce and direct the film themselves; what was once sneakily subversive, fly-on-the-wall vérité is now part of the Men’s own goofy showbiz shtick, which wears more than a little thin at points. Still, it must be said that few, if any, others in American documentary or comedy (or, hell, American politics) are pushing to these anti-capitalist extremes — promising compensation to victims of corporate greed, then, when busted for their impersonations, arguing persuasively that the bigger hoax was perpetrated by those corporations in the first place.

Extra! Extra! Shell Oil offers to help restore the Gulf Coast wetlands! HUD reopens all public housing in New Orleans! The New York Times reports that the war in Iraq is over! This is mass com-hijacking at its finest. That the Yes Men brought along a camera to record such insurrections is just icing on the cake.

Rob Nelson is our guest critic for the month of October.

“Paranormal Activity” is now open in limited release, and will expand on October 9th; “An Education” opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 9th; “The Yes Men Fix the World” is now open in New York and will expand on October 20th.

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