The Corporation

directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar
written by Joel Bakan and Harold Crooks
 

Fitting: Seeing The Corporation in New Haven’s York Square Cinema, a theater currently at odds (and in litigation) with corporate distributors.

Almost fitting: After watching The Corporation, eating at New Haven’s famous Pepe’s Pizza, a hugely successful non-chain restaurant so popular that people wait over an hour in line just to get a table and imagining a horrible world in which Pizza Hut and Dominoes are the only choices.

Not so fitting: Seeing The Corporation while unaware that Ralph Nader was speaking just down the street at BAR.

       Mark Achbar may not be as entertaining as some other current documentarians. Achbar provided me with an introduction to Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media that was intellectually over my head. This was not his fault as much as it was the aptitude of the brilliant MIT professor, yet because of its subject matter the film would have little relative access to the same audiences that Moore, Spurlock or, even, Morris are capable of reaching. While my comprehension of Chomsky is still low at times, Achbar created a gateway of sorts in the familiarity of personality. Chomsky is extremely articulate and even when I don’t know what he’s talking about, his manner has stuck with me so that I can now enjoy his writings and lectures.

      The Corporation, Achbar’s latest with co-director Jennifer Abbott, is more easily taken in, but no more delightful. The documentary plays as a fairly straightforward smorgasbord of information on corporate evils. It does engage, disturb, frighten, depress, surprise and warn throughout its 145 minute running time and occasionally displays a sense of humor, but with the recent mixture of uplifting non-fiction (Spellbound; Winged Migration; America’s Heart & Soul) and sardonic discourse (Super-Size Me; Fahrenheit 9/11), Achbar faces a difficult task of attracting viewers. This is a total shame, however, because The Corporation is the most important new film in release.

        Starting off defining corporations conceptually and historically, the film focuses on the legal establishment of the corporation as a “person” in the mid-1800s. From that idea, a generic “personality” of the common corporation is put through psychological diagnosis with the conclusion that such a “person” is undoubtedly a psychopath. The evidence is made with such familiar offenses as sweatshops, pollution, animal testing, improper accounting and deceitful marketing. Interviews with over 40 people including economists, ecologists, historians, CEOs, whistle-blowers, authors and professors (including Chomsky of course) plus the most film’s most important endorser, Michael Moore, pack the film with more sides than a role-player’s die. And, with seemingly no manipulation from editors, a few present themselves with honest atrocity, like a commodities broker who admits to thinking only of gold prices while the Twin Towers went down in flames.

           Despite the film’s abundance of common knowledge, there are plenty of horrors presented that aren’t on the mind of everyday consumers like affiliations with foreign enemies, particularly Nazi Germany, and a Supreme Court decision to allow the patenting of living things. Also revealed are practices in undercover marketing, corporate espionage and the sponsoring of university students as walking billboards. By picture’s end, audiences are likely wondering which products are still morally acceptable for purchase. (For those curious, visit EthicalConsumer.org, but don’t get so anti-capitalistically paranoid that you’re forced to live in a reclusive shack somewhere)

         The Corporation made me think about the computers featured in recent movies Resident Evil and I, Robot. Eventually, with artificial intelligence, corporations may have similar mainframes literally running companies. Not so far off considering that with all the CEOs, presidents, VPs, board members and shareholders unable to individually take blame for anything their corporation does, such organization already suggests a separate cognizant entity. Almost amusing, but undeniably scary, is the thought that with unsuitably mechanical working conditions and practices as well as the capability to patent, buy and sell animate objects, humans and machines will someday trade utilitarian roles while the corporation shall continue on unaffected.

       A film like The Corporation could have great influence on people if only it had the power to attract bigger audiences. The problem for Achbar and Abbott, though, is not their lack of amusement. Morgan Spurlock’s Super-Size Me made people laugh at McDonalds, but according to Interbrand, the fast food chain’s brand value is increasing. Similarly, Michael Moore’s influence isn’t showing tremendously in the polls and the impact he is having on voters is arguably astray from proper intentions. The mere fact that Joel Bakan wrote the book upon which the film is based and that Achbar and Abbott produced it is commendable regardless of how much it is seen. Essentially, though, a film like this should be number one at the box office because in the long run, what The Corporation communicates is far more important than the corruption of one stupid white man.