Did you watch the Yes Men's latest film yesterday? I did, in my local cinema, as part of a simultaneous screening taking place across the country. The film was hilarious, thought-provoking, inspiring to a certain extent, educational no doubt for some people in attendance. People laughed out loud or clapped while watching, and cried at certain points,especially when the supposed "victims" of their hoaxes: the poor of Bhopal and New Orleans etc, fully supported their scams. Or when Kyrgystan offered yurts to those made homeless by Katrina (although this was no doubt organised by the Yes Men too). All in all, a great cinema experience.

Then it all went a bit weird. The showing was "backed" (sponsored?) by a charity, an NGO. After the film, we watched an awful broadcast from a participating cinema in Sheffield. A panel consisting of the Yes Men, a member of Cabaret Voltaire and somebody else (who the hell was he?) were asked questions by a media wannabe pretty boy, passing on texted questions too, and members of the audience.

It was unclear what was more embarrassing, the awful failure to imitate a late-night culture and arts discussion programme, or the lack of politics or inspiration on offer, particularly from the Yes Men themselves, but all were culpable.

The questions addressed genuine enough issues, but despite having produced a blinding critique of neo-liberal capitalism, the Yes Men's suggestion was that people "do something", and then the world would be a better place.

Er, OK, do what?

Put their names on a clip-board to receive emails.

And?

Their names would be given to the charities and NGOs sponsiring the events and on the Yes Men web-page.

OK. And then what?

People have to ask the government to make things better.

You what?

Yeah, like, renewable energy could be paid for by the Government increasing taxes a little, OK, a lot

Well, this all sounds revolutionary, what else?

Well, as we saw in the US, things only really change during progressive governments, so here in the UK maybe you need to wait a while until the Government gets replaced by a better one [some cultural ignorance here perhaps, do they not know that in the UK, we have GOT the supposedly more progressive of the 2-party state options?]

What about state repression of protest (the film nicked clips of anti-capitalist protests while urging everyone to "do something")? Pre-emptive arrests? Factory occupations (Vestas was raised)?

Yeah, cool, we haven't got arrested and we did some pretty cool stuff, we did a cost benefit analysis and decided that it was worth risking arrest. Cool. And yesterday in support of Vestas we did a cool photo-opportunity, sorry, protest at Ed Millbands house.

Likewise any other form of action (e.g. boycotts) were trashed as ineffective, and the calls to action became more and more vaccuous ("If you're a film-maker, make a film, if you're a musician, make music": So, we should all just do what we do anyway?). In conclusion, people in the cinema I was in got more and more incredulous at the lack of analysis or suggestions of what people could do about the whole venal, exploitative system of profit maximisation, beyond petitioning "good government" to stop the nasty businesses. People yelled at the screen, got up and walked out.

I am interested to know, what happened in other screenings? This seemed like a good opportunity to capitalise on some kind of energy and willingness to discuss shared action, and instead all the anger, compassion and hope got squashed out by some weird TV-mimicking media dribble that actively supressed any model of social change beyond lobbying within the liberal democratic system. Isn't that what we have already?