Vivoleum: Making People Count For Exxon
PHP: So, we talked about things like Dada and punk that are in-your-face oppositional, but The Yes Men’s elegance lies partly in appropriating the imagery, the rhetoric, the messaging systems of capitalism to put some very embarrassing egg on people’s faces without being baldly oppositional. Did you arrive at that style of ironic takedown consciously, or did it just evolve?
MB: It’s something that naturally grows out of its context. I’ll put it that way. Every time we do something, it’s a reaction to existing conditions. So it’s a kind of reactive practice; it’s always based on context, so often the techniques we use are about mimicry, impersonation and adopting the edifice, the behavior of those you’re criticizing. And so it’s totally conscious, totally planned. Most of the time it makes it easier, too, because you have plenty of models to look at and figure out what you’re going to do.
Where it gets more complicated, and really fun, is when you have to introduce the new product. For example with Vivoleum, coming up with the brand name and all that was easy enough, because we knew that it had to look like Exxon stuff. But then actually making the Reggie candles, the human-shaped and –smelling candles, is a much dirtier process. That’s where the artifice takes over and you can sort of let your mind wander.
PHP: It’s clearly where the fun of it is, as well, which gets us back to something else. There’s obviously a pranksterism to what you do; how do you differentiate your work from just more magnificent pranks?
MB: Well, we kind of struggle to come up with a better word than “prank”, because it lets people know the spirit of the intervention, but when you use a word like “intervention” people think you’re dealing with drug addicts or alcoholics or someone in a cult. Other phrases like “culture jamming” or “détournement” describe things more specific than the general run of political pranks. But then people who like what we do often get frustrated because, they say, “Well they’re not pranks!” “Pranks” suggests that it’s kind of childish.
PHP: Does it trivialize it?
MB: For a lot of people it does. At least that’s what we’ve heard, and I believe them. So we need a new word; so maybe whoever is reading this could please suggest some words!
I mean, the nice thing about “prank” is that it’s not like “hoax”, which suggests that something like a falsehood was perpetrated. With “prank” you don’t really know what happened; you have to find out more, which is pretty good, I think. It’s useful in a certain way.
PHP: Is there an æsthetic to a prank that other things don’t have? And likewise, do you two think about “How can we skewer these people in the most elegant possible way?”
MB: There’s always that part of the art of it. The question is always how to do it in the way that makes the most sense or is the most effective. And that’s why sometimes the pranks don’t end up being very funny; sometimes they’re much more effective if they’re not.
I mean, there are two main modes that we work in. One is satire, using satire to get at a broader truth. That’s a product of just exaggerating what our target is already doing—sometimes not exaggerating, but just coming up with a more poetic way of saying it; that’s kind of the Nightmare. But sometimes we like to come up with the Dream, take the same target and announce what we really think they should have announced. So that’s kind of the two versions. One is satirical and the other is kind of just—honest, you know? “A Modest Proposal” versus the honest proposal.
The honest proposal can sometimes be much more effective because usually the target has to respond. In the case of the Bhopal announcement, when we said “Dow is finally cleaning up the mess in Bhopal,” Dow had to come out then and say “We’re not doing that.” They couldn’t just let it wash over them and not say anything, because they had a lot of damage control.
