One thing that I wish we talked about more explicitly in this class is how activists affect and are affected by the media. While we examined alternative media spaces created by fourth cinema, the zapatistas, and others in addition to making our own media, I wish we would have engaged in more of a more direct discussion of ways that individuals and collectives are subverting corporate dominated media. I think that this would have provided a nice counterpoint to all the time we spent on how Americans are coerced and thereby marginalized by advertisers and corporate media sources. In this way, deconstructing examples of popular resistance to hierarchical domination is thoroughly empowering, as it shows that fighting back is not only possible, but a viable and necessary means for engendering social change.
For instance, it would have been sweet to examine the Yes Men, an activist collective in which members pose as high level corporate spokespeople that expose corporate human rights violations by providing false statements during press conferences. They establish legitimacy by creating fake websites through which they solicit and accept invitations to appear at business conferences and on television. In one case, one of the Yes Men, posing as a spokesperson for Dow Chemical, promised twelve billion dollars (money obtained by liquiding their subsidiary Union Carbide) to the victims of a massive chemical spill in Bhopal India on BBC News (to access the clip go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlUQ2sUti8o). A couple hours after the liquidation was reported, the real Dow Chemical denied the statement, thus creating even more coverage. As a result, the Yes Men put huge pressure on Dow to take action on continuing impacts of a chemical spill largely forgetten in the main stream media. On a broad level, the Yes Men show how vulnerable corporations are to media based subversion, as they take advantage of the fact that mainstream media sources place so much faith in authority figures, like spokespeople, to disseminate information. Additionally, they draw on most media consumer's willingness to believe what they are told to their advantage by playing off false claims as real in the public arena. Finally, they counter the fact that most mainstream media sources consult corporate leaders far more than activists for information by disseminating their own corporate messages. In essence, the Yes Men respond to corporate controlled media by becoming the media and subverting it from the inside.
Now I know that the semester is only so long and that we can only do so much, but, as an activist, I am floored by this kind of stuff and I absolutely love seeing people use media to serve socially just ends.