The Corporation (film)

The Corporation
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Mark Achbar Jennifer Abbott
Produced by	Mark Achbar Bart Simpson
Written by	Joel Bakan Harold Crooks Mark Achbar
Narrated by	Mikela J. Mikael
Music by	Leonard J. Paul
Cinematography	Mark Achbar Rolf Cutts Jeff Hoffman Kirk Tougas
Editing by	Jennifer Abbott
Studio	Big Picture Media Corporation
Distributed by	Zeitgeist Films
Release date(s)	Toronto International Film Festival: September 10, 2003 Canada January 16, 2004 (limited) United States: June 4, 2004 Australia:: September 2, 2004 United Kingdom:: October 29, 2004
Running time	145 minutes
Country	Canada
Language	English

The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary is critical of the modern-day corporation, considering its legal status as a class of person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychiatrist might evaluate an ordinary person. This is explored through specific examples. Bakan wrote the book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the documentary.

Synopsis

The documentary shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to affect specific public functions, to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person. One theme is its assessment as a "personality", as a result of an 1886 case in the United States Supreme Court in which a statement by Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite led to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The film's assessment is effected via the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia psychology professor and a consultant to the FBI, compares the profile of the contemporary profitable business corporation to that of a clinically-diagnosed psychopath. The documentary concentrates mostly upon North American corporations, especially those of the United States.

The film is in vignettes examining and criticizing corporate business practices. It attempts to compare the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave with the DSM-IV's symptoms of psychopathy, i.e. callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect the law.

Topics addressed include the Business Plot, where in 1933, General Smedley Butler exposed an alleged corporate plot against then U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt; the tragedy of the commons; Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning people to beware of the rising military-industrial complex; economic externalities; suppression of an investigative news story about Bovine Growth Hormone on a Fox News Channel affiliate television station; the invention of the soft drink Fanta by the Coca-Cola Company due to the trade embargo on Nazi Germany; the alleged role of IBM in the Nazi holocaust (see IBM and the Holocaust); the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of Bolivia's municipal water supply by the Bechtel Corporation; and in general themes of corporate social responsibility, the notion of limited liability, the corporation as a psychopath, and the corporation as a person.

Interviews

The film features interviews with prominent corporate critics such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Vandana Shiva, Charles Kernaghan, and Howard Zinn as well as opinions from company CEOs such as Ray Anderson (from the Interface carpet & fabric company), the viewpoints of Peter Drucker and Milton Friedman, and think tanks advocating free markets such as the Fraser Institute. Interviews also feature Dr. Samuel Epstein with his involvement in a lawsuit against Monsanto Company for promoting the use of Posilac, (Monsanto's trade name for recombinant Bovine Somatotropin) to induce more milk production in dairy cattle.

In addition to the above, the following individuals were interviewed for the film, each appearing on the screen at different times during the documentary:^{[citation needed]}

• Jane Akre, investigative reporter, fired by TV station WTVT
• Ray Anderson, CEO, Interface Inc., world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer
• Joe Badaracco, Prof. of Business Ethics, Harvard Business School
• Maude Barlow, chairperson, Council of Canadians
• Marc Barry Competitive intelligence professional
• Elaine Bernard, director, Harvard Business School Labor Program
• Edwin Black, author, IBM and the Holocaust
• Carlton Brown, commodities broker
• Noam Chomsky, professor, M.I.T.
• Chris Barrett & Luke Mccabe, "Corporately-sponsored" students
• Peter Drucker, professor of management and author
• Dr. Samuel Epstein, Emeritus Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, U. of Illinois
• Andrea Finger, spokesperson, Disney-built town of Celebration
• Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist
• Sam Gibara, chairman and former CEO, Goodyear Tire
• Richard Grossman, co-founder, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy also teaches at the Daniel Pennock Democracy School
• Dr. Robert Hare, Ph.D., psychologist and FBI psychopath consultant
• Lucy Hughes, vice president, Initiative Media
• Ira Jackson, director, Center for Business & Government, Kennedy School, Harvard
• Charles Kernaghan, director, National Labor Committee
• Robert Keyes, president and CEO, Canadian Council for International Business
• Mark Kingwell, philosopher, cultural critic, author
• Naomi Klein, author, No Logo
• Tom Kline, vice president, Pfizer Inc., world's largest pharmaceutical corporation

• Chris Komisarjevsky, CEO, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide
• Dr. Susan Linn, Prof. of Psychiatry, Baker Children's Center, Harvard
• Robert Monks, corporate governance adviser and shareholder activist
• Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
• Michael Moore, author, filmmaker
• Oscar Olivera, leader, Coalition in Defense of Water and Life
• Jonathan Ressler, CEO, Big Fat Inc., undercover marketing specialist
• Jeremy Rifkin, president, Foundation on Economic Trends
• Dr. Vandana Shiva, physicist, ecologist, feminist and seed activist
• Clay Timon, CEO, Landor and Associates, global branding specialists
• Michael Walker, executive director, Fraser Institute
• Robert Weissman, editor, Multinational Monitor
• Steve Wilson, investigative reporter, fired by TV station WTVT
• Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president, Technology and Strategy, IBM Servers
• Mary Zepernick, coordinator, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
• Howard Zinn, historian and author, A People's History of the United States

Critical reception

Film critics gave the film generally favorable reviews. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 91% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 104 reviews. Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 28 reviews.

Variety praised the film's "surprisingly cogent, entertaining, even rabble-rousing indictment of perhaps the most influential institutional model for our era" and its avoidance of "a sense of excessively partisan rhetoric" by deploying a wide range of interviewees and "a bold organizational scheme that lets focus jump around in interconnective, humorous, hit-and-run fashion."

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert described the film as "an impassioned polemic, filled with information sure to break up any dinner-table conversation," but felt that "at 145 minutes, it overstays its welcome. The wise documentarian should treat film stock as a non-renewable commodity."

The Economist review suggests that the idea for an organization as a psychopathic entity originated with Max Weber, in regards to government bureaucracy. Also, the reviewer remarks that the film weighs heavily in favor of public ownership as a solution to the evils depicted, while failing to acknowledge the magnitude of evils committed by governments in the name of public ownership, such as those of the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union.

An op-ed in the Canadian magazine Western Standard reported that the film was "pummelled by experts for getting basic economic facts wrong."

The Maoist Internationalist Movement, in their review criticizes the film for the opposite: for depicting the communist party in an unfavourable light, while adopting an anarchist approach favoring direct democracy and worker's councils without emphasizing the need for a centralized bureaucracy.

The film was nominated for numerous awards, and won the World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, 2004, along with a Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2003 and 2004.

The film has also been used as a teaching tool for the study of intellectual property law most notably in University College London.^{[citation needed]}

Versions

TVO version

It is an extended edition made for TVO that separates the documentary into 3 1-hour episodes:

• Pathology of Commerce: About the pathological self-interest of the modern corporation.
• Planet Inc.: About the scope of commerce and the sophisticated, even covert, techniques marketers use to get their brands into our homes.
• Reckoning: About how corporations cut deals with any style of government - from Nazi Germany to despotic states today - that allow or even encourage sweatshops, as long as sales go up.

DVD version

The DVD version was released as a 2-disc set that includes following:

• Disc 1 includes the film, 17 minutes deleted scenes, 2 tracks of directors' and writer's commentary, filmmakers' Q's & A's and interviews, theatrical trailer, 60 minutes of Joel Bakan interviewed by Janeane Garofalo on Majority Report, Air America Radio, 10 minutes of Katherine Dodds on grassroots marketing, 3 language (English, French, Spanish) subtitles, descriptive audio.
• Disc 2 includes 165 never-before-seen clips and updates sorted by person (Hear More From...) and subject (Topical Paradise). Hear More From... includes updates and goodies like the Milton Friedman Choir singing "An Ode To Privatization". Topical Paradise includes 22 topics, with Related Film Resources include 15 film trailers and a 30 minute UK animated film.

A single-disc set was also released that contained only the main feature.

See also

• Food, Inc.

External links

• The Corporation official website
• TVO site
• The Corporation at the Internet Movie Database
• The Corporation at AllRovi
• The Corporation at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Corporation at Metacritic
• The Corporation at Box Office Mojo
• Interview with Joel Bakan
• Interview with Bakan and Achbar

Downloads

• The Corporation (and bonus interview) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• Soundtrack created by Leonard J. Paul - Leonard J. Paul's entire score for the film is available for free download
• The Corporation online