Agitprop is the act of political propaganda through art or literature. Agitprop can be seen happening a lot right now due to the recent presidential election. People are unhappy with the results, and there are just about protests all over the world because of it, but agitprop has been going on for years. The agitprop artist that I decided to pick was The Yes Men. The Yes Men primarily use media for political sabotage.
The Yes Men work to raise awareness about social issues, and political issues that are a problem. This group was created by two men by the names of Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos. Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos are both past professors. Jacques Servin taught at Parson the New School for Design, and Igor Vamos is on the art faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Suprisingly Igor Vamos, and Jacques servin both had grandfathers that were killed in the Holocaust. The two of them met in the 1990's through mutual friends. When Jacques Servin got fired from his job as a computer game programmer him and Vamos worked together on one of their first stunts. It is actually kind of comical because they switched the voices of Barbie dolls on shelves at toy stores with those of G.I. Joes. This ended up on the news when a handful of confused children were interviews. Tired of all of the political nonsense The Yes Men decided it was time to take a stand. This whole ordeal started when they created their mock website of the World Trade Organization, and people thought it was the real website, but it reality it was a spoof. Some of the other stunts that The Yes Men have pulled is acting as spokespeople for Mcdonalds, Dow Chemical, and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. During the 2000 United States Presidential Election The Yes Men created a website that mocked presidential George W. Bush. The name of the website was www.gwbush.com, and George W. Bush took extreme offense to saying that website criticized him too much.
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| Picture of The Yes Men |
When Barack Obama first got elected president he was talking about his plans to end the war in Iraq. The Yes Men created a fake New York Times newspaper that had a heading on the front cover that in big letters read "IRAQ WAR ENDS." This paper was handed out to hundreds of people all over the world, and eventually made it on CNN the next day. The paper was July 4, 2009, but this whole scandal actually took place in 2008. Everything about the paper looked completely real being that the paper was 14 pages long just like a regular New York Times paper. The reason they wanted to pull this stunt off was because they wanted change. At the time this was a big issue, and it was a way of reminding people that the war still could end after it had gone on for a previous eight years. Some of things that allowed them to get this done was volunteers, donations to get the paper printed.
There really is not much of a relationship between The Yes Men and Joshua Mcfadden except that fact that the both of them felt that there was a problem that needed change. The problem that Joshua Mcfadden felt that there was, was the way that people were treated based on the darkness of their skin. Joshua ended up making this into a big project, and naming the project "colorism."
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| Hoax Newspaper that the Yes Men Created |
The Yes Men
Joshua Mcfadden Website
Yes Men on Wikipedia -> "The Yes Men." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men
"Steve Lambert & Andy Bichlbaum (Yes Men) on CNN - New York Times Special Edition | Eyebeam.org." Eyebeam Front Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.
Yes Men on CNN -> http://archive.eyebeam.org/press/media/videos/steve-lambert-andy-bichlbaum-yes-men-on-cnn-new-york-times-special-edition
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