Review of 'The Corporation' Documentary

So I just finished watching The Corporation, a documentary about the formation and current manifestation of corporations. Now, it’s a long documentary, 2 and a half hours long, but I highly recommend it. Not because I agreed with everything people said in it, because I certainly did not, but because I, for the most part, really appreciated what it tried to do. In short, it was a scathing anti-capitalist film that eased the viewer into the evils of corporations.

The format was very cool – interviews with a lot of people from varying backgrounds – spliced with advertisements, historical footage, and what I will call “shots of nature.” I think about 20 people were interviewed, ranging from professors of business and environmental medicine, lawyers, “business spies,” stock brokers, Michael Moore, Vandana Shiva, Noam Chomsky, a Nobel Peace Prize winning economist, the author of NO LOGO, to CEOs of large corporations such as Goodyear and Interface. I really appreciated this diversity of voices, although it was clear from the editing that the directors favored the words of some over the words of others. I also thought that the advertisements meshed well with the voiceovers and interviews.

Another thing that I thought was really awesome was the way it implicated large corporations as more than “a few bad apples,” but really addressed that the way corporations are structured legally binds them to be driven by profits and have no obligation to ethical values, and in fact the documentary makes the assertion that any attempt to do so is a farce that is more geared toward curtailing their public image than anything else. Something I found to be particularly insightful was the idea that even if they did intend to be socially responsible, these companies got to decide the terms of their own responsibility. This is entirely undemocratic. Furthermore, it gave incredibly specific examples of corporations, naming them extensively, and told in-depth stories about their wrongdoings.

To name just one more thing that I thought totally rocked, the documentary was one of the only ones dealing with environmental justice that was not speciesist. It specifically noted the suffering of other animals. Examples of when it did this were highlighting the court cases that enabled “anything other than a human being” to be legally patentable. It also highlighted many instances of animal cruelty and highlighted it as cruelty to animals, not just treating the animals like another part of the chain of production.

Most notably implicated in this film was Monsanto, best known as a fertilizer and seed company. This documentary provides a scathing critique on Monsanto’s actions. Did you know that Monsanto was the company that created Agent Orange? This was news to me. Additionally, I did not know that Monsanto the manufacturer of rGBH? I also did not know! But yeah, Agent Orange is obviously awful and was used to intentionally harm people. And rGBH causes cows’ udders to become extremely painful and puss up. This puss sometimes gets into the milk that people drink, which is partially why American milk is banned in Europe. Furthermore, Monsanto caused two investigative reporters, who uncovered this information and attempted to show a story about it on Fox News, to lose their jobs. Monsanto either lied about the testing that had been done with rGBH or the FDA overlooked it when approving the drug. On top of that, Monsanto has genetically manipulated seeds such that they terminate themselves after a single season. This means that farmers become dependent upon the company to provide them with seeds year after year after year.

This is particularly troubling culturally in India, where Monsanto has taken to selling seeds. In some Indian cultures, women are the keepers of knowledge about seeds; as Monsanto creates this dependency it strips Indian women of their agency and to some extent their cultural significance.

Another particularly troubling representation of a company was that of IBM. A portion of the documentary was devoted to exposing the ties between IBM and the Third Reich during the time of the Holocaust. Concentration camps were well organized and each prisoner was assigned a punch card, which was used in a predecessor system to the computer to keep track of detainees. The owner of IBM was also seen dining with Hitler and, despite allegations that IBM had no idea what their machines were being used for, documents detailing the communication between the New York office of IBM and the Third Reich during that time were shown.

One last thing that I really appreciated was the devotion of time to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where attempts to privatize the water systems failed miserably as an angry populous fought back against the government and a US-owned multinational corporation. I appreciated this pretty much because it reminded me of Ecuador and the struggles people are facing there to resist the privatization of, well, everything.

The documentary made the argument that the government is powerless in the face of these corporations and in fact is basically controlled by them. Because of this, as people we should take back the government and use democracy to hold these corporations accountable. Additionally, each individual should take responsibility for their actions and attempt to do what they can to, through democracy and laws, alter the landscape of capitalism.

I am not sure I can get behind the idea of government being powerless to corporations, nor that democracy will save us all. As I have stated previously, I do not think the idea of “the majority” really exists, but is constructed given the appropriate context. Furthermore, I do not feel like it is a fair assertion to make that each individual should be held responsible for their actions, especially when this is coming from a person I will identify as upper class. I do not think that it is merely as simple as being responsible, because for a large family in a lower income bracket, one might not be able to afford a non-corporate option if a cheaper corporate one is available. That being said, I do feel it is imperative that CEOs of large corporations hold themselves accountable for the damage they do to other human beings, animals, and the environment.

A few other things bothered me about the film, which I will name briefly. First, I did not appreciate the use of the DSM to pathologize the corporation. I could see how people with mental illnesses (and transsexual people, who I do not consider to have a mental illness, but the DSM does) could find this problematic. Another thing that bothered me was the use of people with disabilities to evoke pity. This occurred in reference to Agent Orange as well as water pollution. I have no problem highlighting that the chemicals we pump into the earth cause birth defects, but I would have appreciated if we had gotten to hear the voices of these people, as opposed to using them as literary devices used to evoke emotion. Lastly, while the film did both focus on some people of color and have people of color in the film, most of the interviews were conducted with white people and I felt the representation of people actually affected, as opposed to “experts” who study the subject, could have aided in the narrative.

Those criticisms aside, I thought the documentary was long but thoughtful and thought provoking. Additionally, it did a very good job of creating a historical narrative and easing people into the idea that corporations might not be the best things in the world. The Corporation is available at Carleton's library.

One last thought, since I have tried to connect most things to either personal rants or Carleton. I wanted to point out that one member of the Board of Trustees at Carleton (Arnold W. Donald) worked at Monsanto for over 20 years, serving as President of the Agricultural Sector from 1995 to 1998 and Senior VP and President of the Nutrition and Consumer Sector from 1998 to 2000. Arnold is a member of the board at organizations Scotts Miracle-Gro, Oil-Dri Corporation of America and the Laclede Group. He was a supporter of Bush/Cheney in the 2004 election and Obama in the 2008 election.