| The Corporation | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | |
| Written by | |
| Produced by |
|
| Narrated by | Mikela J. Mikael |
| Cinematography |
|
| Edited by | Jennifer Abbott |
| Music by | Leonard J. Paul |
Production company | Big Picture Media Corporation |
| Distributed by | Zeitgeist Films |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 145 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $4.84 million[1] |
The Corporation is a 2003 Canadiandocumentary film written byUniversity of British Columbia law professorJoel Bakan and filmmakerHarold Crooks, and directed byMark Achbar andJennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the moderncorporation. Bakan wrote the bookThe Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power during the filming of the documentary.
A sequel film,The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, was released in 2020.[2]
The documentary shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from alegal 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. The documentary concentrates mostly upon corporations inNorth America, especially in the United States. One theme is its assessment ofcorporate personhood, as a result ofan 1886 case in theSupreme Court of the United States in which a statement byChief JusticeMorrison Waite[nb 1] led to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings, based on theFourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Topics addressed include theBusiness Plot, where in 1933, GeneralSmedley Butler exposed an alleged corporate plot against then-U.S. PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt; thetragedy of the commons;Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning people to beware of the risingmilitary–industrial complex; economicexternalities; suppression of an investigative news story about thebovine growth hormone onFox affiliate television stationWTVT inTampa, Florida, at the behest ofMonsanto; the invention of the soft drinkFanta byThe Coca-Cola Company due to the trade embargo onNazi Germany; the alleged role ofIBM in theHolocaust (seeIBM and the Holocaust); theCochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by theprivatization of a municipalwater supply inBolivia; and in general themes ofcorporate social responsibility, the notion oflimited liability, the corporation as a psychopath; and the debate about corporate personhood.
Through vignettes and interviews,The Corporation examines and criticizes corporate business practices. The film's assessment is demonstrated using the diagnostic criteria in theDSM-IV.Robert D. Hare, aUniversity of British Columbia psychology professor andFBI consultant, compares the profile of the contemporary profitable business corporation to that of a clinically diagnosedpsychopath.The Corporation attempts to compare the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave with what it claims are theDSM-IV's symptoms of psychopathy, e.g., the callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, the reckless disregard for the safety of others, the deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive forprofit), the incapacity to experienceguilt, and the failure to conform tosocial norms and respect thelaw.
The film features interviews with prominent corporate critics such asNoam Chomsky,Charles Kernaghan,Naomi Klein,Michael Moore,Vandana Shiva, andHoward Zinn, as well as opinions fromchief executive officers such asRay Anderson (fromInterface, Inc.), business guruPeter Drucker, Nobel laureate economistMilton Friedman, andthink tanks advocating free markets such as theFraser Institute. Interviews also feature Dr.Samuel Epstein, who was involved in a lawsuit againstMonsanto for promoting the use of Posilac (trade name for recombinantBovine somatotropin) to induce more milk production indairy cattle, andChris Barrett who, as a spokesperson forFirst USA, was the first corporately sponsored college student in America.[3]
Joel Bakan, the author of the award-winning bookThe Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, writes:
The law forbids any motivation for their actions, whether to assist workers, improve the environment, or help consumers save money. They can do these things with their own money, as private citizens. As corporate officials, however, stewards of other people’s money, they have no legal authority to pursue such goals as ends in themselves – only as means to serve the corporations own interests, which generally means to maximize the wealth of its shareholders. Corporate social responsibility is thus illegal – at least when its genuine.
— Joel Bakan,The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power[4]
The Corporation grossed around $3.5 million in North American box office receipts and had a worldwide gross of over $4.8 million,[1] making it the second top-grossing film for its U.S. distributor,Zeitgeist Films.[5] It took the place ofManufacturing Consent as the top-grossing feature documentary ever to come out of Canada.
The extended edition made forTVOntario (TVO) separates the documentary into three one-hour episodes:
In April 2005, the film was released onDVD as a two-disc set that includes following:[6]
In 2012, a new Canadian educational version was released for high school students. This "Occupy Your Future" version is exclusively distributed by Hello Cool World, who were behind the branding and grassroots outreach of the original film in four countries. This version is shorter and breaks the film into three parts. The extras include interviews withJoel Bakan on theOccupy movement,Katherine Dodds on social branding, and two short films fromAnnie Leonard'sThe Story of Stuff project.[citation needed]
From 2017 until 2022, the film was formerly available for streaming online onCanada Media Fund's Encore+YouTube channel, licensed by Programming and Operations Lead Paulina Abarca-Cantin.[7][8]
The film is also available for digital purchase onAmazon Prime Video andiTunes.[9][10]
Film critics gave the film generally favorable reviews. The review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reported that 90% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 111 reviews with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Corporation is a satisfyingly dense, thought-provoking rebuttal to some of capitalism's central arguments."[11]Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 28 reviews.[12]
InVariety, Dennis Harvey 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."[13]
In theChicago 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."[14]
The Economist review, while calling the film "a surprisingly rational coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution" and "a thought-provoking account of the firm", calls it incomplete. It suggests that the idea for an organization as a psychopathic entity originated withMax Weber, in regards togovernmentbureaucracy. The reviewer remarks that while the film weighs heavily in favor ofpublic ownership as a solution to the issues depicted, it fails to acknowledge the magnitude of evils committedin the name of public ownership, such as those of theCommunist Party in the formerSoviet Union.[15]
PsychiatristRobert D. Hare is interviewed in the film, and hisPsychopathy Checklist is used to characterise behavior of corporations aspsychopathic in the documentary. Hare's comments used in the film are that:[16]
One of the questions that comes up periodically is to what extent could a corporation be considered to be psychopathic. And if we look at a corporation as a legal person, that it may not be that difficult to actually draw the transition between psychopathy in the individual, to psychopathy in a corporation. We could go through the characteristics that define this particular disorder, one by one, and see how they might apply to corporations...They would have all the characteristics, and in fact, in many respects, the corporation of that sort is the proto-typical psychopath.
In his bookSnakes in Suits (2006; co-written with Paul Babiak), Hare writes that ":[17]
Although the producers of the documentary stated that they used the term psychopath merely as a metaphor for the most egregious corporate entities, it is apparent that they had in mind corporations in general...To refer tothe corporation as psychopathic because of the behaviors of a carefully selected group of companies is like using the traits and behaviors of the most serious high-risk criminals to conclude thatthe criminal (that is, every criminal) is a psychopath. If [common diagnostic criteria]were applied to a random set of corporations, some might apply for the diagnosis of psychopathy, but most would not.
However, in his monologue in The Corporation and the transcript of the interview, Hare, in addition to pointing out differences between corporations, clearly uses generalized terms with regard to numerous of his characterizations of psychopathy applying to corporations. He states, for example:[18]
A psychopath doesn’t accept responsibility for his or her own behaviour. Usuallydiffusion of responsibility is the name of the game for the psychopath. Somebody else made me do it, it wasn’t my fault, it was fate. And I’m not really responsible. Corporations would do this almost routinely I would imagine.
The film won or was nominated for over 26 international awards[19] including winning theWorld Cinema Audience Award: Documentary at theSundance Film Festival in 2004, a Special Jury Award at theInternational Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2003 and aGenie Award - Documentary in 2005.[20]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
