The Corporation
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Movie Reviews of The Corporation
Movie Review: Excellent primer on corporate globalization
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this documentary twice in the theaters, and recently purchased a copy of the DVD from the film distributor's website, Zeitgeist Video, not Amazon. It's an excellent ethnography of corporations and their abuse of power in the U.S. and abroad. The film starts off with a history of corporate charters, and how they gained a definition of personhood through manipulation of the Supreme Court decision that freed slaves after the Civil War. And, as a person, the corporation can be diagnosed with a psychopathic personality disorder using the DSM-IV.
A criticism that I have about the movie is that it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem with corporations: it's not corporations that's the problem, but the underlying economic system of capitalism. It's capitalism that causes corporations to look towards the global south to enslave cheap labor to make a profit. Capitalism that causes corporations to pollute the environment and spew toxins into the air. Capital interests that control the ruling ideology and prevent the voices of dissent from being heard. (The film shows two Fox reporters who were silenced for making a show about cow's milk laced with hormones produced by Monsanto.) The film stops short at pointing a finger at the real culprit for ecological destruction and global stratification today - capitalism.
That being said, it's still a good primer on corporations, and I plan to use it in my intro sociology class for undergrads. It is a long movie, for other educators out there, at 145 minutes. The second disc of the movie has 5 hours of interviews with people from the film including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and the horrid Milton Friedman. And, the website for the film, TheCorporation.com, has a helpful instructor's guide.
Movie Review: Have Your Children Got Bovine Growth Hormone?
Summary: 5 Stars
It's now all about brands, they are the new stars of the economy. If you have the perfect brand, you can sell anything. Churches were the first brands, now corporations rule the world. 1% of the populace owns 50% of corporate stock, 80% of stock is owned by 20% of the populace.
Corporations are designed to be amoral, profits are their true sacrament. IBM leased and serviced punch card machines to the Nazis for tabulating their death camp killing. Fanta was Coca-Cola for the Nazi state. PR firms are their makeup artists.
Bechtel was granted ownership of all water and rainfall in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Bechtel daily charged the people 25 cents, one quarter of a day's pay, for their water. It was against the law to collect rain water. Greed proceeds privatization. "Free Trade" means free for corporate plunder.
Stock traders cheer Iraq bombing as their clients oil stock soars five fold. 9-11 paid off as well. Devastation is corporate opportunity. You are a disposable resource for the corporation, others can patent your blood. "Cool Hunters" find the newest personal fashion expression and sell it back to you.
Psychologist gurus are honing marketing to your baby, for a cradle to grave brand awareness. They smile while they say they really don't know if its immoral to market to an undeveloped brain. Frogs have 5 legs and children are born without eyes. Corporations are the death of birth. Pollution costs are "externalized" to the public.
Adam Smith was actually a social liberal. No markets are free, all have restrictions: but for whose benefit are the laws made - citizens or corporations?
This is the best horror movie of all time. But it's just a movie. Go back to sleep dear, everything will be fine.
Movie Review: from a brain dead (not so) corporate employee
Summary: 5 Stars
Extremely thought provoking movie - especially the concept of corporation as an individual makes you wonder about the true responsibilities of a corporation. the documentary is extremely factual and does not call for unnecessary theatrics to draw your attention rather it is based on monologues by extraordinarily intelligent people of opposing views both from the corporation and outside the corporation. So it is a fairly balanced movie. Actually when you judge the corporation as an individual and then compare it against yourself then you realize that there are so many things that you, yourself should not be doing because you hate the corporation for doing that.
What I really liked is that it has not focused on Enron or Tyco but has dealt with the classic concepts of corporation (Ducker's concepts) and its basic duties within the legal boundaries.
The corporation tend to forget that they are a social structure and have social duties foremost towards environment and then towards their shareholders. The shareholders always tend to come first. For the last 10 years the salary ratio between the executive and non-executive employees have increased to such an extent that it is fair enough to call the corporations as "slave traders" - my value to the corporation ends the day I stop producing - the human factor has been zeroed out.
Sometimes living within the walls of the corporation we forget what the true real world looks like and the struggles in the real world but that is what corporations want since that makes a perfect robot. The more I was watching the documentary the more I was thinking about Aldous Huxley and how true he was in his vision of the future. You will like this documentary
Movie Review: Business as usual
Summary: 5 Stars
This two-disc set is a wonderful package about the American outfits that run large chunks of the world, essentially the parts that have plenty of consumers with money to buy products, that is. Disc one is the basic documentary and at 144 minutes it packs in enough thought provoking material for anyone. Possibly too much though, the various chapters mix talking heads, newsreels, ads and other images in a continuous collage of speech and visuals with a soundtrack of pop music and sound effects, clearly aimed at the MTV generation. If this seems a bit too much like hard work to take it all in then try disc two, for me this was far more interesting because it uses the talking head interviews from the documentary and lets the viewer see expanded versions of what liberals, journalists, professors, CEOs and others have to say, no music, no quick cutting or fancy editing just folks speaking straight to the camera about the history, values, money generating techniques, failures and even the occasional successes of the large multinational companies.
Predictably the corporation as a concept and in reality comes off badly, no surprises there, bad for consumers, the environment and in fact whole nations but it was probably not in the maker's remit to suggest an alternative, those that have been tried over the last hundred years or so turned out to be dismal failures and so it just might be that corporations and capitalism (imperfect as this documentary clearly shows) are the best systems so far developed.
I think this is an excellent documentary and the bonus material (eight hours worth according to the cover) makes it a thought provoking bargain.
Movie Review: What fallacies - what bias?
Summary: 5 Stars
update - I am glad to see the votes endorse just what i wrote here and make it evident that the majority is complacently self-assuring themselves that this type of material is of no use ....looks like conditioning by mass marketing is stronger than the truths revelaed in this marvelous assemblage of evalutions and introspective enlightening insights about why it is time to stop taking it all so casually. Some people never stop wanting to be spoon-fed, even when it is garbage not fit for a human being.
Having just viewed the entire DVD collection of this title, I have to say this should be required viewing for every student and every young person starting a career, especially in the corporate, media or legal worlds.
Having followed and researched numerous aspects of legal plundering of big biz with the cooperation of media, military and government, this expose and documentary puts a very complex and highly disturbing, and hence ignored, matter in very comprehensible and approachable form. One will realize it goes beyond the rules we, as citizens and individuals, of the world have been experiencing and where it is going....watch it for your children's sakes, for that matter, watch it with your children! be prepared for some intense questions, not only from them, but from yourself! realize most people are either ignorant as the lead masses dumbed down or ignorant, OR they have no stomach for the truth that is beyond their control (or at least a vampyric doom machine hard to turn off once started!)! At least you will be one step closer to not being taken in by the fallacies of corporate marketing and public conditioning!