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The Corporation (2003)
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Overview
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Directors:
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Release Date:
4 June 2004 (USA)
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Genre:
Plot:
Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance. full summary | add synopsis
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Awards:
11 wins
&
1 nomination
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User Comments:
The corporation as psychopath
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Cast
(Credited cast) | Jane Akre | ... | Herself |
| Ray Anderson | ... | Himself |
| Maude Barlow | ... | Herself |
 | Chris Barrett | ... | Himself |
| Carlton Brown | ... | Himself |
| Smedley Darlington Butler | ... | Himself - USMC, exposes anti-FDR plot (archive footage) |
| Noam Chomsky | ... | Himself |
| Víctor Hugo Daza | ... | Himself - slain student, Bolivia (archive footage) |
| Peter Drucker | ... | Himself |
| Samuel Epstein | ... | Himself |
| Milton Friedman | ... | Himself |
 | Kathie Lee Gifford | ... | Herself (archive footage) |
| Naomi Klein | ... | Herself |
| Susan E. Linn | ... | Herself |
| Luke McCabe | ... | Himself |
 | Mikela J. Mikael | ... | Narrator (voice) |
| Robert Monks | ... | Himself |
 | Michael Moore | ... | Himself |
| Jonathan Ressler | ... | Himself |
| Franklin Delano Roosevelt | ... | Himself (archive footage) |
| Vandana Shiva | ... | Herself |
| Steve Wilson | ... | Himself |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
145 min | Argentina:150 min (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente) | Hong Kong:165 min (Hong Kong International Film Festival)
Country:
Color:
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Certification:
Netherlands:12 |
New Zealand:M |
Argentina:Atp |
Australia:PG |
Brazil:10 |
Canada:G (Québec) |
Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) |
UK:PG |
USA:Unrated |
Singapore:PG
Filming Locations:
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
Bento Box, a graphics company, produced animations to take place behind the interviewees but they ended up distracting audience attention and so were dropped.
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Quotes:
[first lines]
Narrator: 150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all-pervasive. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. This documentary examines the nature...
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Narrator: 150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all-pervasive. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. This documentary examines the nature...
more
Movie Connections:
Features The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
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Soundtrack:
Bad Apple
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This extraordinary documentary is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004) by law professor Joel Bakan (see my review at Amazon). Bakan's thesis is that the corporation is a psychopathic entity.
In his book he notes that the modern corporation is "singularly self-interested and unable to feel genuine concern for others in any context." (p. 56) He adds that the corporation's sole reason for being is to enhance the profits and power of the corporation. He shows by citing court cases that it is the duty of management to make money and that any compromise with that duty is dereliction of duty.
Directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott bring these points and a slew of others to cinematic life through interviews, archival footage, and a fine narrative written by Achbar and Harold Crooks. The interviews cover a wide spectrum of opinion, from Michael Moore and Norm Chomsky on the left, to Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman on the right. Friedman is heard to agree with Bakan that the corporation's duty is to its stockholders and that anything that deviates from that duty is irresponsible.
What emerges is a view of the corporation as an entity working both for and against human welfare. Designed to turn labor and raw materials efficiently into goods and services and to thereby raise our standard of living, it has been a very effective tool for humans to use. On the other hand, because it is blind to anything but its own welfare, the corporation uses humans and the resources of the planet in ways that can be and often are detrimental to people and the environment. Corporations, to put it bluntly, foul the environment with their wastes and will not clean up unless forced to.
An interesting technique that Achbar and Abbott use is to go down the list of behaviors cited in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that identify the psychopathic personality and show how the corporation has all of those behaviors including a criminal disregard for the welfare and feelings of others and a complete absence of guilt. Indeed corporations feel no compunction when they break the law. Their only concern is whether breaking the law is cost-effective. The result is a nearly constant bending and breaking of the law. They pay the fine and then break the law again. The corporation, after all, has no conscience and feels no remorse.
Bakan notes that "corporations are designed to externalize their costs." The corporation is "deliberately programmed, indeed legally compelled, to externalize costs without regard for the harm it may cause to people, communities, and the natural environment. Every cost it can unload onto someone else is a benefit to itself, a direct route to profit." (pp. 72-73) We are shown how rivers are polluted, environments destroyed and people placed into something close to servitude by the corporation's insatiable lust to profit.
The answer to this, as presented in the film, is to make corporations pay for their pollution. What many people are proposing is the creation of bills or certificates that would allow the barer "the right to pollute." The cost of these bills would reflect the societal and environmental costs of the pollution. This sounds scary, but what it would do is make those who pollute pay for their pollution instead of having the costs be externalized as they are now. Consequently, to protect their bottom line, corporations would pollute less.
Another problem with the corporation as emphasized in the film is that the corporate structure is essentially despotic. It is not a democracy or anything close. The owners hire officers to exercise control over everyone who works for the corporation. This is in direct contrast to democratic governments whose officers are elected and who are subject to the checks and balances of a constitutional government with shared powers. It is true that if you are a shareholder of a corporation you may be able to indirectly vote for the CEO. However, such a "democracy" is a democracy of capital in which the electoral power is inequitably distributed. Some people have hundreds of millions of votes. How many does the average shareholder have? Bakan, Achbar and Abbott play fair, and give both sides of the case--although that is not to say that the weight of evidence or sentiment is equally distributed. After all, who's in favor of pollution or the destruction of the environment? The pathological corporation doesn't care about such things, but its officers should. Some do, but feel constrained by their fiduciary duty to their stockholders. Consequently it is our responsibility as the electorate to get our government to make the corporation socially and morally responsible. The way to do that is make the fines for breaking the law large enough to change corporate behavior. Furthermore--and this is essential--make management responsible--criminally if necessary--for the actions of the corporation.
This is absolutely one of the most interesting, most compelling, and, yes, entertaining documentaries that I have ever seen. But beware of some graphic footage.