The Corporation Review

Let me be blunt. I have no interest in economics. Banking gives me a rash. Talking stocks breaks me out in hives. If it were possible to have a negative degree of interest in something that would describe my general relationship to the world of finance. I know the minimum required to prevent my bank from abusing me in an unsavory manner but that is all I know, or care to.

I exaggerate, but you get the point. If someone were to tell me, “Here, watch this movie about economics, it’s good,” politeness may keep me from laughing in their face but I certainly wouldn’t be looking to them for much in the way of future suggestions. But here’s the strange thing. After months of hearing good things about The Corporation – a documentary film from Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan – I finally sat down to watch the thing and – gasp! shock! – it actually is quite good. Excellent even. Starting with a brilliant premise and bolstered with a never ending array of dead solid interview footage The Corporation manages the difficult tasks of both making its subject matter interesting while also presenting an unrelentingly leftist viewpoint without entirely driving all the right wingers out of the room.

The film declares its bias early. Since the corporation, which is now the most pervasive social institution in the world, is legally considered a person why don’t we evaluate what sort of person it is? So they call in a psych profiler and his big book of mental health diagnoses and come to the conclusion that the typical corporation displays psychopathic tendencies. After this it’s a matter of exploring how and why. Yes, the typical left wingers pop up early and often. Noam Chomsky is a major presence as is Naomi Klein, author of the seminal No Logo. And, of course, Michael Moore pokes his head in though it must have been done largely as a PR move since he adds little to the conversation.

Sounds like an all-in lefty fest, no? Well, no, actually. The film makers here avoid the typical Michael Moore error by firstly not veering into full on histrionics – and I say this as a man who is actually a fan of Moore’s work – and secondly by actually TALKING and – gasp! – LISTENING to a good number of people on the right end of the spectrum, including seven CEO’s of major corporations, an exec from North America’s largest ad placement firm, a paid corporate spy, a stock broker, etc etc etc … The film exists as a series of interview snippets and the directors have made sure to assemble such a diverse and interesting range of interview subjects that, whether you agree with the underlying point or not, you can’t help but remain interested.

Some examples. The extended interview sequence with a group of Fox News investigative reporters talking about how they had a story sent back for revision 87 times while the network tried to force them to be kind and gentle to a major ad buyer is something straight out of Orwell. The situation eventually led to a lawsuit filed against Fox by the reporters, a case eventually kicked when a Florida judge ruled that it was not against the law to deliberately distort the news. Listening to a woman high up in an ad agency that buys twelve billion dollars worth of advertising in the US every year explain the importance of playing upon the weaknesses of children to have them nag their parents into buying the things the advertisers want sold while glibly shrugging off the ethical questions of emotionally manipulating children made me exceedingly grateful for the combination of public broadcasting and my private video library that stands as a wall between my child and said advertisers. Another ad exec laid out real world product placement strategies lifted straight from William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. A Disney exec explained the concept behind the entire Disney Branded Community of Celebration, Florida. Yes, Disney owns an entire town and I’m not sure which is more disturbing – the fact that branding an entire town is a possibility or the fact that there are enough people out there that would want to fill a Disney branded town. And the corporate espionage contractor … no particular story stands out, but I could listen to that guy all day. The interviews here are entirely of the talking-head variety which would normally be the kiss of death on a film that runs over two hours, but these people are flat out fascinating. Every single one of them will somehow inform, entertain or provoke you and that makes for some compelling viewing.

Now when critics are attacking something of this sort they always begin by accusing the film makers of taking people out of context, of showing only what they want to show. Well, as the DVD release makes clear that’s not a problem here. Not only do they talk to a lot of people, but they talk a lot with each of them and the DVD makes a mountain of footage that didn’t make it to the film available. How big a mountain? One hundred and sixty additional interview clips indexed both by interview subject and by topic. So if you couldn’t get enough of a particular person, just jump straight to their section. If you want to see more of everyone’s thoughts on a particular topic, that’s there too. Throw a bucket of features onto the main feature itself and you’ve got a dead solid DVD presentation of an excellent film.

Yes, this is a film made by, and primarily for, the Adbusters crowd. There’s no denying that. For that set it is pretty much compulsory viewing and they probably don’t need me to tell them so. But, that said, The Corporation is certainly not content to preach to the choir and there’s no need for it to. There’s more than enough here to engage and challenge people of all stripes.