Thursday, July 21, 2005

The Yes Men

I saw the "The Yes Men" at Nova - this was a movie fundraiser for one of my friends from LivingRoom who is going on the Oxfam Challenge Southern China (13-daybike ride) in October this year.

The Yes Men is a funny yet thought-provoding documentary (with a serious agenda may I add) about a small group of anti-globalization activists (also known as 'crusaders') who impersonated the World Trade Organization (WTO) on television as well as at various major conferences all over the world. They became representatives of WTO, which they politically oppose and propose such things as recycling human waste to be made into McDonald's hamburgers to be sold in the third world.

When I was doing the subject of Holistic Ministry at Tabor, we had the opportunity to study the topic of globalization. My understanding is that although rapid growth and poverty reduction in China, India, and other countries that were poor decades ago has been a positive aspect of globalization, it has also increased inequality and environmental degradation.

I am interested in knowing about others' ideas / opinions about globalization and activism. And for those of you who have seen The Yes Men, what do you think of their approach of 'changing the world one prank at a time'?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The problem with pranks is that eventually the person will go one prank too far, and get somebody really mad. Seems like the pranksters are trivializing very serious issues too.

Globalization is not wrong. (Christianity is supposed to be globalized. As in Matthew 28:19,20.) Of course, there is a lot of problems with how one globalizes. Like I wonder if the word "Christianity" should be used. People did not describe the followers of Jesus as Christians until somewhere around the conversion of Paul. And even then it was an insult. Economic, ecologic and other forms of exploitation ought to be avoided. (Please interpret this as exaggerated understatement.)

The blog page I added is new. Very underdeveloped. I'm not even what I am going to do with it.