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The Corporation
Description:
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.
An epic in length and breadth, this documentary 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 (i.e., power and profit)--ad infinitum.
The Corporation defines this endlessly mutating life-form in exhaustive detail, measuring the many ways it has not only come to dominate but to deform our reality. The movie performs a running psychoanalysis of this entity with the characteristics of a prototypical psychopath: a callous unconcern for the feelings and safety of others, an incapacity to experience guilt, an ingrained habit of lying for profit, etc. We are swept away on a demented odyssey through an altered cosmos, in which artificial chemicals are created for profit and incidentally contribute to a cancer epidemic; in which the folks who brought us Agent Orange devise a milk-increasing drug for a world in which there is already a glut of milk; in which an American computer company leased its systems to the Nazis--and serviced them on a monthly basis--so that the Holocaust could go forward as an orderly process.
The movie goes on too long, circles too many points obsessively and redundantly, and risks preaching-to-the-choir reductiveness by calling on the usual talking-head suspects--Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore. And except for an endlessly receding tracking shot in an infinite patents archive, there's scarcely an image worth recalling. Still, it maps the new reality. This is our world--welcome to it. --Richard T. Jameson
In this acclaimed documentary from the co-director of MANUFACTURING CONSENT: Noam Chomksy and the Media, 40 corporate insiders and critics—including Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, NO LOGO author Naomi Klein and Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman—explore the nature and spectacular rise of the most pervasive institution of our time. Combining analysis with footage from advertising, television news and industrial films, THE CORPORATION is an entertaining and provocative look at the inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures of the modern global conglomerate. This Two-Disc Special Edition features more than 8 hours of additional material.
Specifications
Actors: Jane Akre, Ray Anderson, Maude Barlow, Chris Barrett, Smedley Darlington Butler.
• Directors: Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott
• Format: Color, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Zeitgeist Films
• DVD Release Date: April 5, 2005
• Run Time: 145 minutes
• Average Customer Review: based on 125 reviews. (Write a review.)
DISC ONE
Two feature audio commentaries: One with co-directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, and one with writer Joel Bakan
Janeane Garofolo interviews Joel Bakan on Air America's Majority Report
"Q's and A's": A selection of television, radio and festival interview segments with the filmmakers, including segments from CNN Financial, WNYC, WBAI, and Air America
Theatrical trailers for The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
Selection of deleted scenes, including additional clips from Michael Moore's The Awful Truth
Grassroots marketing video segment
DISC TWO
"Topical Paradise" and "Tell Me More": Over 5 hours of additional footage of The Corporation's 40 interviewees, searchable by topic or interview subject
US Theatrical Release Date: June 4, 2004
MPAA:
Production Company: Big Picture Media Corporation
USA Box Office: $2 Million
Filming Locations: Celebration, Florida, USA| Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
