THE YES MEN AND ACTIVISM IN THE INFORMATION ... - Index of

Men’s parody web sites), Gran Fury mimicked the appearance of an established commercial
entity in order to confuse the viewer into consideration of information he or she might have
otherwise overlooked. In their case, the Kissing Doesn’t Kill poster was a parody of the United
Colors of Benetton advertisements, which hawked the company as a promoter of racial and
ethnic equality. Gran Fury’s version promoted gender and sexual equality alongside facts about
the then little known AIDS virus. RTMark’s strategies against corporate strongholds, like the
Barbie Liberation Organization, are attempts to create awareness and open dialogue between
parties otherwise blind to the system at work around them. Likewise, the Gran Fury poster
caused an uproar within the communities of New York who would have preferred to ignore the
AIDS epidemic. The Yes Men, on the other hand, instead of taking direct opposition, attempt to
affirm the tenets of entities like Dow Chemical or the WTO to the point of absurdity. So far, as
in the case of the WTO impersonations, they have not had the desired effect of fostering dialogue
among their targets’ proponents, because as stated above, “the image always seems to look
normal to them [the Yes Men’s pro-WTO audience].” 90 Instead, the Yes Men’s victims (aside
from the college students at Plattsburg) all agreed with what Bonanno and Bichlbaum concocted,
even when they proposed to disband the Organization. Such fostered dialogue was vital to the
works of Gran Fury, as became evident with the “Scandalo alla Biennale,” the scandalous events
surrounding Gran Fury’s inclusion in the 1990 Venice Biennale. The group created a site-specific
piece for the Biennale, entitled The Pope and The Penis, which featured two billboards, one with
criticism of the Pope’s (and the Church’s) position on the AIDS virus juxtaposed with a version
90 Bonanno, “Identity Correction.”
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