The men who hoaxed the BBC into believing Union Carbide’s parent company had apologised for the Bhopal disaster are the same people who gave talking Barbie dolls a man’s voice 11 years ago.
In 1993 pranksters outraged toymaker Mattel by swapping the voice boxes of Barbie and GI Joe action figures and putting them back on shop shelves in a spot of gender-bending activism which had Barbie declaring war and GI Joes suggesting shopping trips to confused children.
The culprits, self-styled Barbie Liberation Organisation, now operating under the moniker of The Yes Men, are the two United States anti-corporate activists who last week embarrassed the BBC with the Dow Chemical Bhopal apology hoax.
In an embarrassing episode knocking the corporation’s reputation for accuracy, the BBC admitted the interview it broadcast with ‘Dow spokesman’ Jude Finisterra offering $12-billion compensation to the Bhopal disaster victims, was an ”elaborate” hoax.
BBC deputy director general Mark Byford has ordered a report into the incident, which was only uncovered when some BBC newsroom hacks smelled a rat and called Dow direct, who confirmed Finisterra was no employee of theirs.
However, a quick internet search of ”The Yes Men” throws up hundreds of reports in mainstream media of the pair’s activities over the past 10 years.
The Yes Men stunts and the pair behind them, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, are not exactly low profile; a documentary film about a World Trade Organisation hoax was recently released and George Bush’s election campaign, McDonald’s and Shell have all been targets for their pranks.
A decade ago, Bonanno and Bichlbaum’s antics were considered little more than amusing, or irritating, antics. But anti-establishment and anti-corporate films, TV and books are now big businesses in their own right, with books and films from Naomi Klein’s No Logo to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me critical successes with consumers.
With the Dow hoax The Yes Men were given instant worldwide publicity thanks to the BBC’s covering its ”scoop” on its international channel, BBC World, on News 24 and BBC Radio 4’s morning news bulletin.
The Yes Men created the character of Jude (patron saint of the impossible) Finisterra (earth’s end) after a BBC journalist e-mailed the DowEthics.com spoof website mistakenly believing it was Dow’s official site.
The pair decided to ”do Dow’s PR for them” and asked the BBC to be booked in to a Paris studio.
On their website they describe how they briefly considered going on TV to explain that Dow doesn’t ”give a rat’s ass about the people of Bhopal” but instead settled on announcing ”a radical new direction for the company, one in which Dow takes full responsibility for the disaster”.
”We will lay out a straightforward ethical path for Dow to follow to compensate the victims, remediate the site, and otherwise help make amends for the worst industrial disaster in history.”
Their account says they considered the risks, including giving false hope to Bhopal’s victims, but decided ”what’s an hour of false hope to 20 years of unrealised ones?” and said they hoped the stunt would focus media attention on the issue and might even force Dow to make a compensatory move.
Bonanno and Bichlbaum also reveal that they considered the backlash the BBC might suffer because ”they have covered Bhopal very well, infinitely better than what we’re used to in the US. We would much rather hoax CBS, ABC, NBC, or Fox, but none of those could give that rat’s ass about Bhopal, and so none of those has approached us”.
After the BBC broadcast, the hoaxer rushed back to his Paris apartment to send out a hoax ”formal retraction” from Dow while the real Dow took two hours to react by which time the news of Dow’s ”announcement” has spread around the world.
Neither Bonanno nor Bichlbaum have any formal training in economics, political science or acting, though both spent some time studying at the California Institute of the Arts.
Bichlbaum explained in a US interview that their stunts are the reverse of acting: ”The people you’re speaking in front of believe you are the person you’re pretending to be, and they convince you of it. They suspend your disbelief.”
Bonanno has a graduate degree in art from UC San Diego, where he embarked on the Barbie stunt that sparked his future activities.
Bichlbaum is an internet expert who spent the dotcom boom years in San Francisco and has funded Yes Men activities with jobs in the digital industry. Both are now full-time Yes Men funded by charitable foundations and donations. – Guardian Unlimited Â