***1/2 (out of ****)
A documentary directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar & written by Achbar, Joel Bakan, and Harold Crooks
2003
145 min NR
“The Corporation” sets up its point and makes it with singular determination. It begins with the corporate scandals of the last few years and how various voices—politicians, corporate representatives, commentators—claim that it was all the work of “a few bad apples.” But, no, “The Corporation” asserts, the notion of the corporation is inherently flawed. What we’re facing today is like one of the logical conundrums from Asimov’s “I, Robot,” in which a loophole in the Three Laws of Robotics allow the metal men to run amok. To wit, the First Law of Robotics states that a robot cannot, through action or inaction, allow any human being to come to harm. (Yes, I wrote that from memory.) This, of course, eventually leads the robots to wrest control of the whole world from the humans, because if left to our own devices we would keep hurting each other. Oops.
Similarly, the legal entity known as “the corporation” is designed solely and legally required to do nothing but make money, without conscience, morality, or any of that other human junk. In fact, if a corporation does anything that it knows is unprofitable for any reason, it is breaking the law. The One Law of Corporate Robotics is that it must make money, although in the course of “The Corporation” we wish that would get pushed back to the status of Third Law to make room for a “Not allowing any human being to come to harm” kind of First Law. But so what? The corporation is a tool, like any other, and our tools don’t have morality or conscience. Chainsaws, cars, and forks don’t have minds either. They tell us if something can be cut, driven on, or stuck into our mouths. But the problem is that this one particular tool has been granted the status of a legal person and given enormous powers, freedoms, and control over our destiny. It is, as the movie states, the “dominant institution of our time.”
“The Corporation” takes the corporation’s legal status as a person and famously (notoriously?) puts it on the shrink’s couch. What kind of person is the corp? A greedy, self-centered, eco-unfriendly maniac, of course, and he’s legally required to be that way. An FBI profiler declares him a psychopath. But that’s the point of legal incorporation—by denying the owners personal culpability, the corporation is allowed to make decisions too abominable for all but the most demented individuals to make. The status of legal person is ludicrous. All the men-in-charge interviewed by “The Corporation”—and “The Corporation” interviews a lot of them—seem like nice guys. Eco-friendly Interface president Ray Anderson comes across as a saint—humble, soft-spoken, self-critical.
As “The Corporation” tracks the corporation’s history of offenses against workers, the community, and the environment, labels like “good” and “evil” become silly. The corporation is utterly amoral; its legal framers told it to make money, so, like a computer program let go, like Haley Joel Osment at the end of “A.I.,” it just keeps going and going and going. Like the scientists in “I, Robot” who were confident the robots would stay “within reason,” someone forgot to program an end point or some sort of safety valve.
Michaela Mikael provides “The Corporation” with its narration in a slinky robot voice (in a DVD extra, Janeane Garofalo describes her as having a “sexy computer voice…the Klingons have boarded the airlock, the Klingons have boarded the airlock”). Stylistically, the movie is smooth and sterile. Taking a page from Kubrick, “The Corporation” half-embraces that which it decries: the movie’s marketing strategy was a brilliant nationwide circulation of the “Corporate Man,” with his briefcase, suit, halo, and demon tale. His silhouette was put on every imaginable product. The movie is based on a book by Joel Bakan, which is probably more informative, but not as accessible or entertaining, and lacking the abundance of interviews. And, perhaps most importantly, the movie is not a vitriolic left-wing diatribe, but received positive reviews from most of the business community.
“The Corporation” doesn’t come out and say it, but the “culture wars” of recent years might be entirely economic. The tail is wagging the dog when it comes to elected office, religion, morality, gender politics, and everything else. The tail are those who believe the world would be better if absolutely everything were thrown to the free market—those who believe the world would be better if we threw off the shackles of nation-states, deprive the weak of their votes, let commerce sort out all the woes of the world, and grant power only to those who are strong enough to wrench it from the marketplace—and those who favor old-fashioned elected officials, beholden to their constituencies. Everyone else in the fray might just be a distraction because, really, get a congressman to mention a certain set of values a few times and suddenly his deregulation bill becomes a jihad.
The commodification of everything can have two results, and neither of them are pretty. First, we turn into a world of schizophrenics, in which we talk Jesus in the home (“serving others is the salvation of the world!”) and Adam Smith at work (“selfishness is the salvation of the world, so take anything that isn’t nailed down!”). For an idea of about how well that works, consult “The Godfather.” The other outcome is that we don’t become schizophrenics; we forget Jesus, gradually reduce everything to some bland, salable quality, and abandon all notions except greed, what with greed equaling salvation and all.
Lest you think that simply because giant, power-wielding entities behaving in a certain way does not necessitate that individuals will come to reflect that behavior, keep in mind that American states with the death penalty have higher murder rates than those that do not. What can we conclude from this evidence? That if something is acceptable for the powerful to do, then it is acceptable for the commoner to do as well. If it is acceptable for the state to solve problems by killing, then it is acceptable for the commoner to do the same. If it is acceptable for giant, power-wielding entities to scoop up everything they can see and say “it’s your own fault for not guarding it better!” then of course it will be acceptable for the commoner to do the same.
Okay, so in the last three paragraphs I didn’t really talk a whole lot about the movie itself. But I want to emphasize how “The Corporation” gets your wheels turning. It is bursting with information that comes at you in a lively, digestible manner. Now one of my cats is asleep with his eyes half-open and he’s staring at me. That’s creepy so I’m going to sit in a different room.
Finished Friday, October 21st, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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