The Corporation

2004 "The corporation as psychopath..."
8| 2h25m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 04 June 2004 Released
Producted By: Big Picture Media Corporation
Country: Canada
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.thecorporation.com/
Synopsis

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

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Reviews

Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place
Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.
Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
david-sarkies 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.
Desertman84 The Corporation is a documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott that examines the modern-day corporation, considering its legal status as a class of person and evaluating its behavior towards society and the world at large as a psychiatrist might evaluate an ordinary person. The filmmakers interview leftist figures like Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, and Noam Chomsky, and give representatives from companies Burson Marsteller, Disney, Pfizer, and Initiative Media a chance to relay their own points-of-view.In the mid-1800s, corporations began to be recognized as individuals by U.S. courts, granting them unprecedented rights. Applying psychiatric principles and FBI forensic techniques, and through a series of case studies, the film determines that this entity, the corporation, which has an increasing power over the day-to-day existence of nearly every living creature on earth, would be a psychopath. The case studies include a story about how two reporters were fired from Fox News for refusing to soft-pedal a story about the dangers of a Monsanto product given to dairy cows, and another about Bolivian workers who banded together to defend their rights to their own water supply. The pervasiveness of corporate influence on our lives is explored through an examination of efforts to influence behavior, including that of children.An epic in length and breadth, it aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.Finally,this is a satisfyingly dense, thought-provoking rebuttal to some of capitalism's central arguments.
Neddy Merrill "The Corporation" is a straight-forwarded documentary critique of what is arguably modern society's most powerful institutions -- incorporated business enterprises. What about governments? Well, yes, in some countries, notably Russia, corporations do as directed (just ask a Russian oil billionaire if the warden allows). However, the movie argues, the fairly self-evident point, that elected officials have little recourse but to swing their influence in the direction very large, very wealthy and very well connected people (corporations are legally persons) point. The movie recounts the mechanisms of this influence including congressional votes lobbied, tax codes rewritten and resistors silenced. At its most interesting the film covers the excesses of this power. According to the film, Mosanto, which makes an appearance in most material of this nature, boosts profits by selling seeds that produce non-reproducing plants so that another purchase needs to be made the following year and sues farmers who disagree with their practices. Another corporation buys all of the water rights in part of a South American country so that collecting rainwater becomes a form of stealing which the government enforces on the company's behalf. The examples in the film are many, frankly too many given this is a cinematic release rather than the PBS special it much more assuredly feels like with its multitude of title cards and talking heads most notably Noam Chomsky. Much like a PBS special, the tone is even-handed and civil and makes you understand why Michael Moore earns far more on his screaming, one-sided docs ("Fahrenheit 911") than he does on his more harmonious, balanced offerings ("Sicko"). In short, the movie lacks enough thematic elements to make for a particularly interesting film and the central premise that corporations are very powerful and are profit-driven will shock only the most naïve. As CNBC's Jim Cramer says: "it is government for the corporations, by the corporations and from an investor's standpoint, that is a good thing."
Eric (eric-1268) This movie is ridiculous and can't be named a 'documentary'. Almost every problem which occurs in the world is blamed on the corporations.Pollution? It's the corporations. Cancer? It's the corporations. Did you just get fired? It's raining? It's the corporations. Man, it's not that you're not functioning, of course: it's the corporations! Hey, you're company is actually successful? YOU'RE EVIL!It's a one sided piece of junk which basically says: " we don't have any responsibility ourselves, so we blame everything on the corporations! " Can't believe why this is rated so high in on IMDb. I guess 3.437 unemployed tree hugging people voted this junk a 10.