The Corporation (Mark Achbar/Jennifer Abbott 2003)
Posted on January 13 at 11.23, 2007 by Eric Mahleb
A high budget and overlong documentary on the rise of the corporation over the past 150 years. It could have been 45 minutes shorter and still be as effective.
Nevertheless, this documentary has plenty to offer and enough to, hopefully, make even pro-business and pro-capitalism viewers think about the negative implications of a world dominated by greed, money and power.
The Corporation, unlike many documentaries, provides different points of view and gives both sides a chance to express themselves. That I found the pro-business speakers ridiculous (with the exception of the ex-CEO of Shell) is either a reflection of my own bias or an indication that the producers of the documentary selected these people for their self-defeating image and rationale.
A lot of the content of The Corporation is unnerving, at least to any viewer who has the ability to empathize. Emotional Intelligence is a precious but unfortunately lacking commodity in today’s society. If it were available in large quantity, we wouldn’t be facing the kinds of problems that The Corporation highlights.
We live in a world where human beings are willing to sacrifice other human beings and the planet we all share in the name of power and money. The concept of the corporation, initially created to help 19th century slaves has been changed and adroitly moulded by lawyers to serve the need of a few at the expense of the many. Selfishness and greed have redefined our society and have become the prevalent standards to imitate and value.
In a world dominated by ever-growing and increasingly powerful corporations, the individual becomes expandable, governments meaningless and the environment and its riches insignificant. But what is perhaps the scariest of all is the realization that the corporation has become an entity that can and does progress on its own, without necessarily requiring human intervention, a bulldozer on auto-pilot that crushes everything in its path and that only a bigger bulldozer can stop. This means that even when decent people (they exist) obtain high profile positions, they are in most cases unable to change the course and direction of that corporation. Indeed, there is only one direction possible: forward, towards more money for shareholders for whom the concept of enough is never enough.
I can’t help but to think about the countless Science Fiction films I have watched where a killer virus or bacteria is discovered. After analysis, the bad and myopic scientist always admires the beauty of a perfectly constructed organism that can self-replicate, whose cells regenerate faster than they can die and whose inability to feel make it the perfect weapon with total control over its environment.
The corporation today is such entity. And so far, we don’t seem to have found the cure…
My vote: 
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4 Responses to “The Corporation”
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Sicko - Quiet Please - Film reviews by Eric Mahleb Says:
September 9, 2007 at 9.43[…] That being said, for anyone not familiar with the US health system, watching Sicko can be illuminating. As with many aspects of American life, many health related decisions are based on money and profit (see The Corporation), and not, sadly, on need. Thanks to Henry Kaiser and to Richard Nixon, in the name of profit, people in dire need of assistance are left to die, the responsibility of no one but themselves. A perfect example of the sometimes very negative consequences of an ideology that places individual responsibility far above group responsibility. I personally find it interesting that Moore portrays the English universal health system as clearly superior to the American one, even though after spending several years in both countries, I can attest that the English one, while offering care to everyone, does it, and this is naturally based on my own experiences, with means and methods far inferior to those found in the US. But I suppose that, as Michael Moore knows very well, it is possible to isolate a good experience in one country and to place it on the same level of comparison as a bad experience in another country. […]
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The Future of Food - Quiet Please - Film reviews by Eric Mahleb Says:
June 8, 2008 at 6.58[…] As people across the globe slowly become accustomed to hearing about genetically modified corn, canola or soybeans and fail to fully understand how it impacts them, corporations such as Monsanto are busy patenting seeds (and thus life; a horrifying thought to ponder. Big pharma is now beginning to patent genes), developing and planting new genetically modified crops, unbeknownst to most, and suing farmers in an effort to pressure them to use these corporations’ seeds. These corporations are also consolidating the food supply, thereby reducing the diversity of our crops and produces and driving many farming communities out of business, both in the Western and Third Worlds. In a word, everything awful that you have ever heard about what motivates corporations is unfortunately also applicable to the world of agriculture and genetically modified foods. […]
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On The Future of Food - Quiet Please - Film reviews by Eric Mahleb Says:
June 8, 2008 at 7.10[…] A sometimes poorly structured and organized documentary with a moderator whose voice would put you to sleep if the topic wasn’t so interesting, The Future of Food nonetheless provides an interesting look into the dangers of genetically modified foods and is a good companion piece to the better We Feed the World (2005).As people across the globe slowly become accustomed to hearing about genetically modified corn, canola or soybeans and fail to fully understand how it impacts them, corporations such as Monsanto are busy patenting seeds (and thus life; a horrifying thought to ponder. Big pharma is now beginning to patent genes), developing and planting new genetically modified crops, unbeknownst to most, and suing farmers in an effort to pressure them to use these corporations’ seeds. These corporations are also consolidating the food supply, thereby reducing the diversity of our crops and produces and driving many farming communities out of business, both in the Western and Third Worlds. In a word, everything awful that you have ever heard about what motivates corporations is unfortunately also applicable to the world of agriculture and genetically modified foods. […]
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The Omnivore’s Dilemma - Quiet Please - Cinema Futures by Eric Mahleb Says:
October 12, 2008 at 17.57[…] As I have posted several times before, I believe in the benefits of technology in the long run. I believe that we will, at some point in the future, master enough knowledge to create artificial foods that taste good, that are beneficial to us and that are manufactured in a way which is at peace with the environment. However, we have not reached that stage. We are still living in a world in which corporations are pushing sugar and unhealthy processed foods down our throats, making false claims about the health benefits of their products, bribing government officials to get clearance for substances that are clearly toxic, abusing our environment in dangerous ways, using unimaginable cruelty towards the animals that are part of our food chain, and all in the name of profit. While the long term future of food lies clearly with the scientists and the nutritionists (hopefully without the pressure of corporations), the immediate and short term future on the other hand must imply a return to a more natural way of eating, one which is at peace with the planet and in harmony with the way evolution transformed us over millions of years. […]