The Corporation (2004)

Thorough and scathing look into the social, environmental and economic destruction the current corporate system is sowing. Not entirely optimistic, it shows many viewpoints from Capitalist chiefs, Greening CEOs and the usual swag of the likes of Chomsky, Moore and Klein. It covers a lot and is quite in-depth. I never knew Basmati rice had been saved from corporate ownership. There is much to glean from this, even if you are already aware of the current economic imbalances we face. A must watch.

The corporation itself is a dichotomy, namely because despite what is wrong with these entities (the film proves that they have all of the characteristics of a psychopath), these entities are responsible for the lifestyle that we currently have. To be honest, to remove the economic institutions and return to the era of the cottage industry and the local store owner is going to end up driving up prices and undermine our current lifestyles.That does not necessarily mean that it is good for us to live luxurious lifestyles that we are living in the west, particularly since our lifestyles are supported on the backs of slaves. While they may not be slaves in the literal sense, they are slaves in the economic sense, living on less that two dollars a day and working extra-ordinary hours in horrendous conditions. Despite the fact that many of the senior executives of these corporations (as well as the shareholders, which include any of us who have a pension fund) pretend that we don't know how these goods are being made, or the conditions that the workers are working in, in reality we wish to remain wilfully blind to the reality of what is going on.Granted, I may not own a car, and resist the temptation to buy things that are not needed, I still live a life of luxury, and the fact that I can jump on a plane and fly to Europe and back, is testament to that. There are people that I work with that to them such an adventure is little more than a pipe dream, and I am not even earning big bucks, however relatively speaking, because I have no dependants and no debt, I have a much higher disposable income than many other people that I work with, even those who hold higher positions than I do.There are a few things that come out of this movie that I wish to explore, and one of them is the corporation as the externalising machine. Externalising is the art of making something somebody else's problem, despite the fact that you are the cause of that problem. For example, when a corporation dumps all of its toxic waste into the river, and lets the government and the community deal with it, then it is externalising waste management. It is too expensive to actually deal with it properly, and the laws that prevent it from doing such things are weak, or even non-existent, that the most cost effective way to deal with waste is to externalise it.Labour is another thing that is externalised, and one way to do that is to contract out certain areas so that the corporation can cut back on labour costs and not have to feel responsible for how products are used. In fact, where in the past a corporation was defined by what it made and in turn sold, this is pretty much disappearing as we speak. Nike do not make shoes, they contract that out to some sweatshop in Indonesia which is not even owned by them. Instead, they buy the shoes, and then sell the shoes, either direct to the consumer or through an intermediary. As such Nike is no longer a manufacturer of shoes, they are simply a brand that makes money by being a middle man. However, it is not even that by contracting labour to the sweatshops that the product becomes cheaper. The price of the product actually stays the same, it is just the profit that the corporation makes increases (and even then there is no guarantee that the shareholders will ever see any of that profit. Instead they will keep the profits, which no doubt will result in an increased share price, and even then the shareholder must know when to sell (which is nigh impossible) to maximise their investment.What we need is not to get rid of the corporations, because at heart we need them to be able to maintain our extravagant lifestyles. However, what we do need is a paradigm shift, within ourselves and within our society. We have to begin to learn to be content with less. The Socialists are right when they say that even if we live in a country like Australia, we must still remain vigilant less the freedoms and the laws that we have here are undermined by corporate greed. However, how many of us live in houses with electricity, and how many of us watch television. Can we go without our laptops or our mobile devices, because it is our desire for these things that keep the corporations in control. Granted they make our lives easier, but at what cost? Even if climate change is not a man made phenomena, the pollution that is spewed into the air, and the toxins that are pumped into our water supply are having a significant impact upon the world in which we live, and to be honest with you, it is unsustainable.We may wonder if there has ever been a similar period in history like our own, and my answer is that on one hand there hasn't been one, but in another there has. The period I point to is that of the mid to later Roman Empire, where people were living such luxurious lives that they blinded themselves to the ecological destruction that they were causing. It is not simply that either, because inflation was running rampant, and while the rich were getting richer, the basic necessities of life were unreachable by the masses. Rome ended up collapsing, and with it creating a dark age of epic proportions, and that is something that even now we are also looking at.

This excellent documentary accurately depicts, through factual reportage, the nature of a corporation, often a destructive force when it comes to the human consciousness, that is, when in contact with human consciousness, often toxic, when placed under considered scrutiny and in historical perspective.In my view, a corporation is not an "entity," nor a "person," despite judges in courts who have ruled it that, judges, perhaps bought and paid for by corporations reaching for control of and over civilization in the United States. A person has consciousness, compassion, and morality. A corporation does not. What it does have: "strategy." What the corporation is: a system, often with a singular objective, to make profits. It is the embodiment of greed.It is a strange phenomenon projected by human behavior. It was isolated, analyzed and described in Truman Capote's 1966 seminal work, In Cold Blood, a "non-fiction novel" first serialized in The New Yorker in 1965. This behavioral revelation is about the formation of an overriding singular force that is either tyrannically destructive or in a few cases, constructive, when two or more humans are present in a scenario. In Capote's book, two petty thieves create a singular, malevolent force that destroys an innocent family. By themselves, neither of the two thieves could or would have been capable of the murder.The positive or negative nature of the corporate force is created from the combination of top management, sometimes boards, if the board is in close control of the corporation. In most cases, since the objective of most corporations is profitability, the bottom line becomes the most powerful arbiter of the corporate behavioral history. In too many cases, the results are destructive to human health and welfare.Top management typically walks in a chain-lock-step, especially when members receive the obscene amount of compensation published in today's business journals. As a result, whistle blowers who report malfeasance, crime or destructively bad management are disposed of, and in the case of existing within a modest municipality controlled by the corporation, also black-listed.Malefactors are usually promoted and rewarded, often in spite of the corporation itself, as it begins to decline and eventually go out of business and close its doors, moving hundreds or thousands of employees and subcontractors who had grown dependent, out into the street to search of new employment.The greatest danger today (at this writing) is the takeover of governments by corporations who buy entire political parties, government institutions and more or less cause great human suffering and destruction of human well being and in too many cases, life itself. Untrammeled, the corporate system or force, has the potential to destroy all human life on Earth. This documentary clearly shows this possibility. It is the most insidious specter today, soon to come out of China in vast dimensions, presently inconceivable.

The Corporation should be given kudos for being a massive nearly three hour length documentary and still remain mostly entertaining and keep you engaged in the material. However I also felt like they were simply like lawyers trying to prove a case. It would not be hard for them to convince me that corporations are evil and conducive to bringing down society and yet they really pour it on thick and go so far as to try to make us believe that a corporation is equivalent and fits all the qualifications for a medical diagnose of a psychopath. Director and creator Mark Achbar is obviously very passionate about this topic and kudos to him but I think where the film falters is in it's passion. All this information is presented in a very factual straight forward fashion and it just feels like it's being drilled into you for three straight hours. I think the film could have been far more effective given a smaller time frame and some serious trimming. Certainly the film isn't for the weak minded or someone who doesn't want to be intellectually challenged because the film will take some serious thought. I think in the future we will see some great things in documentary film making. Worth seeing if you're doing some studying into the politics of corporations. 6/10