The Corporation
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Movie Reviews of The Corporation
Movie Review: Must See to understand the world we live in
Summary: 5 Stars
Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbot and Joel Bakan have created one of those rare films that touch deep into the heart of a reality that we are not even aware of. This is an incredibly important film discussing the modern corporation.
They start by giving some historical background, and discuss the nature of the modern corporation:
1. The Corporation, through legal maneuvering achieved by exploiting civil rights legislation meant for freed slaves, is considered a 'legal person.' It has all the rights of persons (right to free speech, free press, own property, etc). But, of course, it can't be punished as a person. You certainly can't put a corporation in jail! The only thing you can do is make it pay fines...
2. The Corporation is legally bound to maximize profit for shareholders. Not doing so is actually breaking the law.
The filmmakers argue that you put these two legal requirements together and you have created a monster (A funny shot of Frankenstein is included, one of the many amusing shots of old film footage in the film). Well, in actuality, you have created a psychopathic person: the filmmakers actually psychologically examine the corporate 'person' to reach this conclusion. This psychopath will go to any and all extremes to reach its legally mandated goal, which is to maximize profit.
The rest of the film is about the extremes that corporations are willing to go to make their shareholders happy:
1: Traditional 'domains' of the marketplace are no longer enough: Corporations are expanding the boundaries, expanding what is 'for sale.' Things that are now for sale include the genetic material of all life forms, certain life forms such as laboratory animals, and water- including rain water from the sky, and towns. (The film documents a Disney town)
2. The Corporation will do whatever makes the most profit at that particular time and place. If evil ideas such as racism and genocide are popular among consumers, corporations will take advantage of this to maximize profits, as IBM did by supplying the Nazi regime with equipment for tracking holocaust victims.
Note, right now, corporations maybe into the concept of `corporate social responsibility' as they calculate that this is currently popular among consumers. However, in areas without consumer power or political power, ideas of corporate social responsibility are often tossed out the window, and exploitation such as sweat shops are the norm.
3. Corporations readily suppress free speech and freedom of the press. Two investigators hired by a FOX subsidiary station to do investigative documentaries were told to quash their story on the effects of hormones on cows and human health, because it threatened the profits of Monsanto. They refused, and faced negative consequences (and are still suffering the repercussions)
4. Corporations will manipulate political power (even undermine it if necessary) as necessary. This is not a surprise with the huge lobbying efforts underway. However, what maybe surprising is that corporations seem to get seats at the UN decision making table, and the extent to which corporate spy networks are intermeshed with government spy networks. The film highlights an unknown event in American history in which corporations, disliking the New Deal, engineered a coup against President Roosevelt, only for their plans to be revealed and thwarted by the supposed ring leader, Smedley Darlington Butler. However, the film also makes the point that such coups are no longer necessary for corporations to influence politics, as they are now so intertwined into the modern political system.
Clearly, the film is one-sided. However, since we spend most of our life learning about the positives of corporations- the enormous wealth they create, their contributions to progress in science and technology and to vastly improved living standards, etc, this film is a welcome counter-balance. It makes one think, at what price have we received these benefits? Is it worth it? What will we leave to future generations? Is it fair for them to sow what we reap?
Unlike other reviewers, I thought the ending was a bit too optimistic, a failed attempt by the filmmakers to inject a great deal of hope in a dire situation. It is heartening that people all over the world are joining in the effort to reform corporations, but I did not really see any real results. One exception was the case in Bolivia where they managed (for now) to overturn the privatization of their water. In this case, the price was quite high- rioting in the streets, lots of casualities and some deaths of the protestors. Other than that, there were some stories of small successes, but not anything that will really affect the steam-rolling corporate machine.
A telling case: the film highlighted the great deal of negative press that was generated by the discovery of sweatshops producing Kathie Lee Gifford's line of clothing, resulting in the highly publicized apology by Kathie Lee to a sweatshop worker during a congressional inquiry. However, the film also states several years later, the sweatshops were back in business- no real changes have resulted as a result of all this hoop-la.
However, I guess it helps to keep in mind what Joel Bakan keeps emphasizing: Historically, whenever an empire or institution is at its peak, and seems most powerful and unassailable, that is precisely when it will start its downfall, as it becomes over confident and careless.
It is definitely worth watching the extra material, as you get additional insights into nature of the Corporation, and additional exposes of its actions.
Movie Review: Corporation - Politics, Economy, Society, and Logo Loyalty
Summary: 5 Stars
The documentary Corporation provides an angry and dark image of the leading corporations of the world, and justly so. This image originates with the 14th Amendment, which the government generated in order to give the slaves the same freedoms as its owners. Somehow, similar corporations that exploited the slaves took the opportunity to maximize their powers through the very same document that helped slaves gain their freedom. Through the 14th Amendment, Corporations gained rights of individuals, yet without individual responsibilities for the actions of the corporation.
Cleverly, filmmakers Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar utilize the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), which psychological health professionals use to assess and diagnose mental disorders. The psychological profile of a corporation should be justifiable, if they intend to fall under the same category as an individual in a legal sense. Through the psychological profile of corporations, several deviant behaviors occur such as "failure of conforming to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest" (see pp. 649-650 in DSM-IV.) In the film they checked of all seven criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder, and only three of them need to be checked in order to receive this diagnosis, which in common mouth is referred to as being a psychopath.
The case studies in the film offer a more intricate view of how some of the ruthless corporations advance through the American and world community. For example corporations have been found guilty of performing deceitful exploitation of people, their money, and their health as the Monsanto corporation deceitfully informs the public that their rBGH drug does not have any side effects on cows or human beings while Canada and other European countries have banned the supplement for increased milk production. A FOX television news show did research the topic and tried to air the news in regards to the cancer inducing effect of rBGH and how cows suffered dire consequences of the drug. Nonetheless, the reporters could never air the show, as Monsanto methodically prevented the truth from reaching the people through the legal system. This triggers the notion that corporations are above the law while they can squelch the opportunity for all citizens to exercise their first amendment right through exercising economic fear within those who dare to speak up.
Numerous studies have suggested that milk cows injected with rBGH have a lowered immune system and higher bacteria level. Farmers in turn treat cows with high-level of antibiotics to prevent bacterial infestations in the cows, but it also increases the likelihood of the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria that could eventually cause people to die from simple illnesses. Corporations such as Monsanto do not have to carry responsibility, as they have the law on their side while they can externalize the damages (i.e., let someone else pay for the damages) when random health problems such as cancer could appear. Some corporations even take in consideration what it would cost if law enforcement would catch them, and they often deem it to be worth the risk when penalty fees would not exceed the profit margin. This raises the notion, where does society draw the line of biological attacks on a nation?
Besides the negative and dark image of the corporation the audience also gets to hear the CEO of Interface, Roy Anderson, expressing his concern of corporations continual plundering of the earth. The viewers also get to learn about Shell's concern about environmental issues, yet they do not seem willing to hastily find an alternative resource for oil. Even Michael Moore informs the audience that many corporations provide a good product, but it is the excessive profiteering that seems to upset him.
There are several other topics that are brought to the audience's attention such as the stock trading blindness that occur on Wall Street and places alike, as the only notion that crosses the trader's mind is the profit. Several intriguing examples are provided as many made big profits after 9/11 in gold while the first war in Iraq increased the price on oil that gave many a large dollar profit. The audience also learns how companies enter war, that they do not have to pay for while harvesting large profits on the situation. There is also a swift and detailed report on ownership of the patents of living things, as the judicial organ that ruled in the first case had no clue what it was talking about which resulted in people now being able to own the rights to certain genes or microbe essential for living. They even talk about ownership of space, water, and air, which displays an ugly event in Bolivia and how American corporations continued their business deals with the Nazis in Germany. An interesting question would be whether these companies or the people working for these corporations have committed any acts of treason .
Ultimately, the Corporation offers a cinematic experience that will unsettle all viewers without consideration for what side of the issue they stand. It is also remarkable how the film causes cerebral unrest, as if it tries to reach out to the audience to take action. If the audience wants to get more information in regards to the film or issues in the film they can visit the website www.thecorporation.com, which offers a little of everything for the interested. Otherwise, it provides some interesting notions to ponder in regards to current and future politics, economy, society, and corporate loyalty.
Movie Review: Psycho
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Corporation" is documentary filmmakers, Mark Achbar's and Jennifer Abbott's incisive and often humorous study of the dominant institution of modern times. The film traces the corporation's evolution from a charter with specific goals, well-defined legal constraints, and a finite lifespan to the pervasive behemoth it has become today.
Corporations, as this film demonstrates, have all the legal rights of a human being and none of the accountability. After the Civil War, corporations took advantage of the newly drafted Fourteenth Amendment (granting civil status to freed slaves) to assume the legal rights of a human being. As a result, corporations were able to sue people, to buy other corporations and to enjoy a host of other benefits afforded a person. Unfortunately, while corporations enjoyed the legal protection of a human being they possessed none of the legal or moral accountability of one. On the contrary, the legal structure and profit motive of the corporation effectively bestowed it with all the characteristics of a psychopath.
As you can imagine, this film documents a variety of corporate abuses that range from environmental destruction to IBM's provisioning the Nazi regime with the punch card machines required by the logistics of the Holocaust. Such abuses are accompanied with a wide range of denial (someone else will fix the problem, or we don't know how the Nazis got our machines) and perception management. As a result of years of intensive marketing and PR work, most of us tend to endow corporations with human personality traits (including sympathy and compassion) that they never had and never will.
Some of the documented abuses are so extreme that they seem like something witnessed in some doomsday science fiction movie. Monsanto Corporation, for example created a terminator seed that dies at the end of each harvest season so that farmers are forced to buy more from them again, and again, and again. It also created a growth hormone to stimulate milk production in cows at a time when the world market was already flooded with milk. This hormone caused an utter infection, which frequently results in puss mixing with the harvested milk. Guess, what, that milk is currently on sale in America. (Canada and Europe rejected the hormone and consequently do not have puss-infected milk like we do.)
One of the most disturbing aspects of this film is its demonstration of the trend that everything (all the land, all the sea, all the airspace, all of the DNA) on the planet is quickly becoming privatized. Free Market fundamentalists argue that once everything is owned, the stakeholders (for example, the owners of a stream) will actively protect their interests (presumably the perseveration of the stream). But as recent examples have shown, when the stakeholders are corporations their only motive is profit. Bechtel Corporation, for example, contracted with the Bolivian government to take ownership of all the water in a provincial city including the rainwater. Can you imagine having to pay a company for the right to put out a bucket, catch rainwater, and drink it? Guess what, that's already happening.
So how did it come to this and why do we put up with it? Among other things, corporations have done an exceptional job marketing themselves. We tend to think of them as being human in some sense and as a result, we endow them with personality traits such as athleticism, cuteness, and others.
To see corporations for what they are we would have to overcome two types of conditioning. First, we would have to disbelieve all of the ways they market themselves. Nike is not cool and Kathy Lee is not compassionate toward children. These are all amoral institutions whose only goal is profit without limitation.
Next we would have to get real about our current political institutions and what they really mean. At the moment, most Americans treat politics like a football game and support their team generally for the sake of comfort and maintaining an identity. What we fail to consider is that the overwhelming majority of our politicians are bankrolled by corporations. Think about it, corporations have the rights of a person and the behavioral traits of a psychopath. They fund the people who run for office and who while purportedly representing us, actually advance the interests of their masters. There's nothing liberal or conservative about any of this, it's simply a fact of life.
At the time of this writing, I work for a large, powerful corporation, which brings up another point in the film. Most of the people employed by corporations including executives are decent people. Corporations themselves are not such bad things as long as they don't have the kind of tyrannical authority currently in their possession. Somehow a new paradigm is required that accounts for progress and opportunity without destroying lives to advance the interests of a psychotic institution.
The film ends on a few hopeful notes such as a successful CEO who decided to make his company environmentally sustainable (and still profitable), or Bolivian citizens who took to the streets to reclaim their water sovereignty. But the most important change needs to take place in your head and in mine. We need to let go of our stories about what these institutions are and what they mean to us. Then on an individual basis we can start making the changes that just might prevent the unquestionable annihilation of life on Earth that will occur if we continue to have blind faith in a pathologically destructive institution.
Movie Review: Superb Easy to Understand Itemization of the Fraud Inherent in Any Corporation
Summary: 5 Stars
I admire a number of the reviews that have already been posted, and am doing this one primarily as a personal record and for those that follow my reading in non-fiction about national security and national competitiveness (690+ reviews).
This is a superb DVD. I did not realize there was a book by this name, but all things being equal, the visuals that come with the DVD, and the shorter time to absorb the message that can been carefully crafted, make this a great value.
For those that were not around or students in the 1970's I have to say that Barnett and others did a lot of study on the topic of out of control ungovernable unregulatable multinational corporations, and a lot of this was anticipated thirty years ago. However, this DVD provides a wonderfully coherent and fresh look at some key points that need to be understood by the general public.
* Modern corporation is today's dominant institution, with global reach and global impact, yet it is ungovernable by national or state or local governments, has limited liability, and seeks to maximize internal profits by externalizing all possible costs including environmental degradation, the importation of poverty, spread of disease from lack of health benefits, etc.
* "A few bad apples" (e.g. Enron, Worldcom, Exxon, etc) is a "jingle" that has been used to cover up the fact that a lack of ethics is a predominant characteristic, not an exception. See my reviews of Lionel Tiger (The Manufacture of Evil), The Informant, The Cheating Culture, etc.
* The corporation is a paradox--it creates great wealth, and it also does great harm. It is, however, an ARTIFICIAL creation, and we have it in our power to reverse its limited liability status.
* The corporate agenda does indeed compete with the public interest agenda, and can be likened to the damage that occured with the loss of the commons--while the corporation has done much good, the concept of the people belonging to and being at one with the land was lost forever when the land could be "owned" by an artificial person as well as a real person.
* Corporations can and tend to be psychopathic. The definition of a psychopath includes callous unconcern, unable to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for tohers, deceitfullness, inability to experience guilt, failure to conform to social norms--gosh, this defines the Bush White House, not just corporations. It also defines the media, religions, and some labor unions. No wonder we have problems!
* The corporate mind-set is divorced from the good of the group--only a corporation would develop the concept of a terminator one time use seed, or throw away goods.
* 9-11 was capitalized on by traders, as was the war in Iraq. I am reminded of General Smedley Butler's recommendation in "War is a Racket" when he suggested that when the US goes to war, everyone in the private sector be absorbed into the government at enlisted and junior officer ranks, and not allowed to carry out war profiteering.
* The DVD does a good job of examining the sophistication of marketing, describing it as a smart bomb in comparison to early day "bb guns." The DVD discusses the seduction of the consumer and the use of branding as an invasive form of producing customers almost against their common sense (because of this DVD I am buying the book NO LOGO).
* Corporations today are allowed to patent life, which is wrong and was always excluded, until a court did not realize that a microbe was life, and considered it a chemical formula instead. From that mistake, hundreds of cases have been filed by corporations under the laws intended to protect the life and property of former slaves.
* The DVD expresses concern over who might protect the public interest when information is controlled and filtered by the corporations. Monsanto is troubling case study, with good coverage in this DVD of how they were able to deceive EVERYONE in the US from academics to reporters to regulators, but only because they did not do their homework. In Canada, Montanto was stopped in its tracks by effective food safety regulators.
* The DVD is somewhat inflammatory in attempting to make the case that corporations not only helped fascism in Germany but are a form of fascism themselves. There is something to that, just as the is something to the reports that the major Nazis resettled in the USA and produced Karl Rove and Otto Reich as well as some really really bad covert operations and regime changes against democracy and in favor of dictatorships.
* The DVD ends on two notes, one troubling and one positive. The troubling note is that corporations are now trying to take over water, privatizing water, to the ridiculous point that in Bolivia the natives were not allowed to collect rainwater--this is not only obscene, but radicalizing. On a positive note, the DVD ends with an interview of a person describing in Spanish how many small battles are being won, and the corporations are being beaten back.
This is a very fine DVD, which joins Lords of War and Ghandi among others in my serious collection. Very worthwhile.
See also, with reviews:
The Informant: A True Story
Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story
Movie Review: Worse than you may have thought.
Summary: 5 Stars
Would you pay a criminal or a drug seller or a murderer your hard-earned money for goods and services? Does that make us an enabler considering we do exactly that? Money is all that matters for corporations - examples included in "The Corporation" run from hiring a spy to learn the competitions' secrets, to doing business with Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany - and even conspiring to overthrow the US Government!
With the surge in popularity of anti-corporate media such as Michael Moore's films, The Daily Show, and so forth, a majority of the population would agree that corporations not only possess too much power, but use it in a way that damages our way of life. I am among this majority and am quite familiar with the premise, so I falsely predicted this movie would tread little new ground.
But I ended up watching a movie that for the first time ever, forced me to pause it and collect myself before I could continue. Considering I was already quite familiar and tuned in to corporate elitism, I was surprised to be so moved by yet another film to explore this. As a result, I can recommend this film to experienced thinkers and the unitiated, especially since it is very well made from a production stand point and takes no political side - which is a matter of choice when making a documentary. You can either try to make an activist film that will reach the largest audience or "preach to the choir" - and this film achieves that balance quite well.
Its only shortcomings are the difficult task of condensing the broad scope of corporate malcontent on our world into a single film. Therefore we have a 2:25 film that is naturally emotionally draining due to its subject matter and length, and which I also felt was lacking proper exploration on such subjects as labor downsizing and our current administration.
What you end up seeing can be rather astonishing, but believable and relatable, as you hear the information straight from many of the corporate CEOs themselves as well as industry insiders. These corporations may spend billions on public image, but when they sit down in front of a camera they have trouble keeping a straight face as they gloat about their exploitation of the impovershed and brainwashed to heighten their revenue. There is little judging or demonizing from anyone else - there's no need, since the facts speak for themselves.
You will find many interesting facts in this film, such as a couple of businesses that specialize in helping corporations maintain that sparkling clean and mind numbingly omnipotent persona, as well as providing the data to determine which marketing strategies will work best in attracting more consumers. It got particularly disturbing as one of these outspoken business leaders happily described how she specifically manipulated children with advertising and deep market research to "nag" their parents for toys and products in order to get her clients more money - all at the expense of engraving a material desire in our kids at as young an age as possible.
This isn't a sci-fi film. Corporations are not only paying money to Psych grads of prestigious Ivy league schools billions of dollars to decide how best to mind-f**k you out of your money, but some even utilize "undercover" adverts - payed employees that pretend to be enjoying a product or buying it in large quantities in a crowded area to set forth an image of quality with that product and make you want to buy it.
This film also traces the roots of how this phenomenon started. What came first; the chicken or the egg? Did people demand everything to be bigger, faster, and louder or did corporations lull us in to an unwinnable game of instant gratification? What this film answers is that corporations demanded more power early on and got it at our expense. Amazingly, a group of corporations, furious with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and its effects on their revenue, conspired to form an army of 500,000 strong to overthrow the President of the United States, until the government learned of their plan. As always, you must think for your self, and some aspects of any documentary may be shortened either for length or for sensationalism, but I have not personally found anything wrong in this film.
You'll also see the justice courts of the U.S.A. defend Fox News' right to lie in their programming, grant corporations the right to be a legal person, as well as a medical company the right to patent the very DNA of our biology. Add to this the environmental privatization of water and land, and the destruction of our biosphere, you start to see a picture of an all-powerful owner in "The Corporation."
As dramatic as this all is, it is a true, real story of our country and our world. Towards the end, you see all the cards on the table. As shown in the film, "They" own the media, the government, the environment, the courts, and ultimately us. A real battle of good vs. evil emerges. But as I said, this film is not about demonizing CEOs; instead it takes that distraction down a notch so we can focus on who is really fueling the empire of greed - our selves. Personal responsibility is the key in this battle.
Even if you're familiar with the enemy, hearing it again or sharing it with a friend is always helpful. I recommend this film as a shocking night of information or as enlightenment and inspiration that we all need to counter the trillion dollar industry that is intrinsic in human nature; greed.
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