Documentary Film Review

‘The Corporation’: Sobering Look
At Dream World of Advertising Hype

        It’ll Get You and Your Little Dog Too

By Alex Holachek (September 21, 2005)

As a denizen of the high school hallway, you are no doubt aware of the omnipresent power of commercial marketing. You realize that the difference between a trendy article of clothing and a nearly identical one you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing is often as simple as the writing or design emblazoned on it. (Abercrombie and Fitch, anyone?)

Perhaps you get an inexplicable rush by simply holding that eye-catching brand name soda can available for your slurping pleasure from the vending machines in school. Or maybe that’s just me.  Anyway, such pleasures seem relatively harmless. Sure, you’re aware that companies pay top dollar to get you to associate their products with popularity, excitement and enjoyment, but it’s your money, and it’s not like you’re hurting anybody, right? Unfortunately, that line of reasoning comes up woefully short when confronted with the very real havoc wreaked by giant companies preoccupied with turning a profit.

The documentary The Corporation, while it might not convert you instantly into a dreadlocked anti-globalization activist, will raise thought-provoking questions about the current status quo if you have the stamina to get through its 145-minute running time.

With shocking stories of a US company’s attempt to privatize Columbian rainwater, Fox News’ 1997 attempt to silence muckraking reporters (okay, not so shocking…) and other tales of abuses of power, The Corporation likens big companies to psychopathic individuals who pursue selfish ends with a reckless, amoral disregard for the well being of other people.

The analogy is not as far-fetched as it initially seems. A corporation, the documentary explains through humorously dated black-and-white educational clips, has legal status approximating that of a person, with many of the rights emanating thereof. The trouble results from the fact that a company is very obviously not an actual person, with attendant personality and conscience; but rather a business creation designed to make the maximum amount of money for its shareholders. It has no inbuilt moral obligations to protect the rights of workers or the environment against its voracious appetite for profit. The documentary intersperses its interviews and main points with sufficiently disturbing accounts of corporate misdeeds to forever alter the way you view giants like Gap--at least until it’s time for you to go clothes shopping next year. Nevertheless, I dare anyone to watch the section on a company called Monsanto and its attempted distribution to farmers in third world countries of  “suicide” seeds that destroy themselves after a single planting, and not become awash in righteous indignation that this corporation’s profit motive trumps all else. “You really need to have a brutal mind. It’s a war against evolution to even think in those terms,” says Dr. Vandana Shiva, who championed the fight against the company, and won.

Despite its engaging visual style and barrage of interesting information, the documentary does have its share of faults. Its inexplicable inclusion of the strident, self-aggrandizing Michael Moore among intellectual heavyweights like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn is somewhat annoying. It also seems to belabor a few points, spending nearly all its time tearing down the corporate system without offering any viable alternative. “We can change the government. That’s the only way we’re going to redesign, rethink, and reconstitute what capital and property can do,” says one commentator. Yeah, I wish, but as long as ‘we’ are up against the dual forces of a monolithic corporate public relations industry and widespread apathy at home about the conditions of workers who make our tennis shoes, I don’t think that’s going to be happening any time soon.

Still, The Corporation is a worthwhile film. It serves as a sobering counterbalance to an attractive but ultimately meaningless dream world of advertising and hype. I highly recommend it. And who knows, perhaps a dreadlocked hairstyle will be the logical outgrowth of your newfound social consciousness.