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Publication Date: 2005
Publisher: Zeitgeist Video

Description: 'The Corporation' explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives. Taking its legal status as a "person" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS including the AUDIENCE AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. The long-awaited DVD contains over 8 hours of additional footage.

The film is based on the book 'The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power' by Joel Bakan. (also available through 100fires.com)

In 'The Corporation', case studies, anecdotes and true confessions reveal behind-the-scenes tensions and influences in several corporate and anti-corporate dramas. Each illuminates an aspect of the corporation's complex character.

Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing; in addition, a Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a rang of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are interviewed.

A LEGAL "PERSON"

In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal "person." Imbued with a "personality" of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation's rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth. But at what cost? The remorseless rationale of "externalities"-as Milton Friedman explains: the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third-is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.

THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES

To more precisely assess the "personality" of the corporate "person," a checklist is employed, using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social "personality": It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a "psychopath."

MINDSET

But what is the ethical mindset of corporate players? Should the institution or the individuals within it be held responsible?

The people who work for corporations may be good people, upstanding citizens in their communities - but none of that matters when they enter the corporation's world. As Sam Gibara, Former CEO and Chairman of Goodyear Tire, explains, "If you really had a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to do that suited your personal thoughts and your personal priorities, you'd act differently."

Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer, had an environmental epiphany and re-organized his $1.4 billion company on sustainable principles. His company may be a beacon of corporate hope, but is it an exception to the rule?

MONSTROUS OBLIGATIONS

A case in point: Sir Mark Moody-Stuart recounts an exchange between himself (at the time Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell), his wife, and a motley crew of Earth First activists who arrived on the doorstep of their country home. The protesters chanted and stretched a banner over their roof that read, "MURDERERS." The response of the surprised couple was not to call the police, but to engage their uninvited guests in a civil dialogue, share concerns about human rights and the environment and eventually serve them tea on their front lawn. Yet, as the Moody-Stuarts apologize for not being able to provide soy milk for their vegan critics' tea, Shell Nigeria is flaring unrivaled amounts of gas, making it one of the world's single worst sources of pollution. And all the professed concerns about the environment do not spare Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists from being hanged for opposing Shell's environmental practices in the Niger Delta.

The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world disasters can be profit centers. Carlton Brown, a commodities trader, recounts with unabashed honesty the mindset of gold traders while the twin towers crushed their occupants. The first thing that came to their minds, he tells us, was: "How much is gold up?"

PLANET INC.

You'd think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your DNA.

Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains from which they were previously barred.

PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT

The Initiative Corporation spends $22 billion worldwide placing its clients' advertising in every imaginable - and some unimaginable - media. One new medium: very young children. Their "Nag Factor" study dropped jaws in the world of child psychiatry. It was designed not to help parents cope with their children's nagging, but to help corporations formulate their ads and promotions so that children would nag for their products more effectively. Initiative Vice President Lucy Hughes elaborates: "You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying your products. It's a game."

Today people can become brands (Martha Stewart). And brands can build cities (Celebration, Florida). And university students can pay for their educations by shilling on national television for a credit card company (Chris and Luke). And a corporation even owns the rights to the popular song "Happy Birthday" (a division of AOL-Time-Warner). Do you ever get the feeling it's all a bit much?

Corporations have invested billions to shape public and political opinion. When they own everything, who will stand for the public good?

THE PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING

It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH, a controversial synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe and Canada) to rev up cows' metabolism and boost their milk production. Because of the increased production, the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce people's resistance to disease.

Fox demanded that they rewrite the story, and ultimately fired Akre and Wilson. Akre and Wilson subsequently sued Fox under Florida's whistle-blower statute. They proved to a jury that the version of the story Fox would have had them put on the air was false, distorted or slanted. Akre was awarded $425,000. Then Fox appealed, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and Akre lost her award. [For an update on the case see Disc 2 where we learn that at one point, Jane and Steve became liable for Fox's $1.8 million court costs, later to be reduced to $200,000.]

DEMOCRACY LTD.

Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn't understand. In fact, corporations have often tried to undo democracy if it is an obstacle to their single-minded drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to install a military dictator in the White House (undone by the integrity of one U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley Darlington Butler) to present-day law-drafting, corporations have bought military might, political muscle and public opinion.

And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of democracy's absence either. One of the most shocking stories of the twentieth century is Edwin Black's recounting IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany-one that began in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continued well into World War II.

FISSURES

The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent, but since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising wave of networked individuals and groups have decided to make their voices heard. Movements to challenge the very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The corporate charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant Unocal; a groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata, California, put the corporate agenda in the public spotlight in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the population fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation brought in by their government to privatize the water system; in India nearly 99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the U.S. government's patent on Neem was revoked.

As global individuals take back local power, a growing re-invigoration of the concept of citizenship is taking root. It has the power to not only strip the corporation of its seeming omnipotence, but to create a feeling and an ideology of democracy that is much more than its mere institutional version.

THE DVD

Along with the groundbreaking 145-minute theatrical version of the film, the two-disc set has eight hours of never-before-seen footage. All of your favourite heroes and villains are back. In addition to two commentary tracks, deleted scenes, Q's and A's, additional languages and descriptive audio for the visually impaired, 165 never seen before clips and updates are sorted "by person" AND "by topic." Get the details you want to know on the issues you care about. Then, check out the web links for follow-up research and action.

Review(s): "The most astute and flat-out persuasive political documentary of the new millennium... the superb, new double-disc DVD release will give viewers even more time to stew, given that it's packed with an abundance of excised footage, related film and web resource listings, commentaries and more." - Brent Simon, Now Playing Magazine

"In a word; wow. No two discs (including the feature) have ever been so fully packed with extra features... If there was ever one documentary worth owning, it's certainly this." - DVDnet

"Cogent, even rabble rousing indictment of the most influential institutional model for our era." - Dennis Harvey, Variety

"Thought-provoking doc... [The filmmakers] wrap their end-is-nigh warning in an entertaining package, and the coolheaded delivery increases its impact." - Megan Lehmann, The New York Post

"Fast-paced, highly enjoyable and provocative" - Bill White, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Coolheaded and incisive...thorough and informative... It leaves audiences with a cold shiver" - Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

"Move over, Michael Moore! Securing the participation of so many kings of capitalism was one of the filmmakers' most vital accomplishments." - Sheelah Kolhatkar, The New York Observer

"Leisurely, never boring, grimly amusing, and not entirely hopeless disquisition on the contemporary world's "dominant institution." - Village Voice

"Clever, quietly passionate and sweeping" - John Anderson, Newsday

"This is the kind of filmmaking that could, if seen on a large scale, change the society we live in." - Chris Parry, Hollywood Bitchslap

"'The Corporation' is just brilliant-visually, intellectually, and morally. This film has redefined the documentary genre" - Barbara Ehrenreich, author of 'Nickel and Dimed'

"'The Corporation' is a riveting, entertaining, and highly intelligent film that is sure to provoke heated discussion about a long-neglected but vital question: the proper role of business in society." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of 'Confidence: How Winning Streaks And Losing Streaks Begin and End', professor, Harvard Business School

"A must see for all executives who want to know more about the forces working worldwide against them." - Paul Argenti, Professor of Management and Corporate Communication, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth

"'The Corporation' is a wonderfully provocative film that deals with fundamental questions that should be addressed by anybody who works in a corporation or plans on doing so." - Dr. Tima Bansal, Shurniak Professor of International Business, Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario

"This remarkable film is a resounding requiem for the notion that a corporation's social responsibility is satisfied by maximizing profits for its shareholders. It should be mandatory viewing for every MBA in the USA." - Don Mayer, Editor, International Business Law Review

"'The Corporation' raises questions about the enduring viability and value of the corporation as the primary vehicle for organizing the production of wealth in market-based societies. It raises important concerns about the impact of the corporate structure on a range of public goods and should provoke thinking about whether or not there are better ways to more effectively organize production for the general welfare." - Mark Amen, Director of the Globalization Research Center, University of Southern Florida

"What are they? Secretive anti-democratic-in fact, tyrannical-institutions [with much in common with Fascism and Bolshevism] which, not so long ago, sneaked into our social system through the back door of the courts. Is this generally known? Far from it. This is why 'The Corporation' is so unique: there is no other film that turns the spotlight on them so everyone can see what they are up to and what needs to be done." - Carlos P. Otero, Professor of Linguistics, UCLA

"This vivid and often mesmerizing film lifts the veil from one of the most important and least understood features of modern age: the extraordinary powers that have been bestowed on virtually unaccountable private tyrannies, required by law to act in ways that severely undermine democracy and the most elementary human rights, and that pose a serious threat even to survival." - Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, MIT

"A Martian biologist observing humans would ponder with amazement the fact that among their other modes of self-destruction, the species has also engineered a lethal mutation that has joined the race to bring their civilizations to an end: the corporation, an abstract legal entity, granted the rights of persons by court decisions a century ago, and rights vastly beyond persons of flesh and blood by mislabelled 'free trade agreements.' It is a special kind of 'person' in other ways: with immense power, immortal, unaccountable, dedicated to expansion and transferring costs to others, and required by law to be pathological and destructive, with no commitments other than those that would send a real person to therapy or mental institutions. The book by Joel Bakan that is the basis for this fine film spells all of this out in lucid detail. The film captures its essence with imagination and engaging skill. It should be a wake-up call for those who hope that there may be a decent future for their grandchildren." - Noam Chomsky again, Institute Professor, MIT