The Corporation (2003 film)

This article is about the documentary film. For other uses, see The Corporation (2003 film) (disambiguation).

The Corporation
Promotional poster for The Corporation
Directed by	Mark Achbar Jennifer Abbott
Written by	Joel Bakan Harold Crooks Mark Achbar
Produced by	Mark Achbar Bart Simpson
Narrated by	Mikela J. Mikael
Cinematography	Mark Achbar Rolf Cutts Jeff Koffman Kirk Tougas
Edited by	Jennifer Abbott
Music by	Leonard J. Paul
Distributed by	Big Picture Media Corporation
Release date	September 9, 2003 June 4, 2004
Running time	145 min.
Country	Canada
Language	English

The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film critical of the modern-day corporation, considering it as a class of person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychologist might evaluate an ordinary person. This is explored through specific examples.

Creators

The film was written by Joel Bakan, and co-directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary has been displayed worldwide, on TV and is also available on DVD. Bakan wrote the book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (ISBN 0-74324-744-2), during the filming of the documentary.

Synopsis

The film charts the development of the corporation as a legal entity from its origins as an institution chartered by governments to carry out specific public functions, to the rise of the vast modern institutions entitled to some of the legal rights of a person. One central theme of the documentary is an attempt to assess the "personality" of the corporate "person" by using diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia Psychology Professor and FBI consultant, compares the profile of the modern, profit-driven corporation to that of a clinically-diagnosed psychopath. The film focuses mostly on corporations in North America, especially in the United States.

The film is composed of several vignettes examining and critiquing corporate practices, and drawing parallels between examples of corporate malfeasance and the DSM-IV's symptoms of psychopathy, i.e. callous unconcern for the feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (repeated lying to and deceiving of others for profit), incapacity to experience guilt, and failure to conform to the social norms with respect to lawful behaviors.

Topics addressed

Topics addressed include the Business Plot, where in 1933, the popular General Smedley Butler exposed a 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 role of IBM in the Nazi 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.

Starring

Jane Akre Investigative reporter, fired by TV station WTVT
Ray Anderson CEO, Interface, world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer
Joe Badaracco Prof. of Business Ethics, Harvard Business School
Maude Barlow Chairperson, Council of Canadians
Mark 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 Management guru
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
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 advisor 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
Jonathon 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

Interviews

The film also 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 capitalist 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 for promoting the use of Posilac, (Monsanto's trade name for recombinant Bovine Somatotropin) to induce more milk production in dairy cattle.

"The corporation is an externalizing machine (moving its operating costs to external organizations and people), in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks, a corporate governance advisor in the film and former GOP (Republican) candidate for Senate from Maine

Reception

Film critics gave the film generally favorable reviews. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 90% 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." He 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 USSR.

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, in their view "offers no realistic alternative to imperialism." and "it shares some of the strengths and downfalls" of Mark Achbar's film Manufacturing Consent, which celebrates the life of anarcho-syndicalist, linguist, and activist Noam Chomsky. In their view, "corporate power for profit [is] not the same as megabureaucracy without profit."

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 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival in 2003 and 2004.

Topically related films

• Why We Fight
• Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
• Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers
• The American Ruling Class (2005)

Books mentioned in the film

• IBM and the Holocaust
• No Logo
• The Ecology of Commerce

External links

• The Corporation official movie website
• Interview with Joel Bakan
• Interview with Bakan and Achbar
• The Corporation at IMDb
• The Corporation at AllMovie
• The Corporation at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Corporation at Metacritic
• The Corporation at Box Office Mojo
• "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" - famous article by Nobel economist Milton Friedman (this title appears as a phrase in an out of context quote in The Corporation movie)
• Robert A.G. Monks - site of Robert A.G. Monks, shareholder activist and corporate governance advisor, interviewed in the film.

Downloads

• Google video, part 1 and part 2
• Internet Archive: movie and bonus interview in MPEG4, DivX, and streaming
• The Filmmakers Official Download Edition - A torrent, created by the filmmaker, containing the film.
• Soundtrack created by Leonard J. Paul - Leonard J. Paul's entire score for the film is available for free download
• The Corporation Direct download (.avi, 700 Mo)