Corporate Bad Apples Become the Apple of this Documentary's Eye

By Courtney Berry
July 27, 2004 04:21 PM

"Bad apples" is a favorite term used by journalists to identify the recent slew of corporate executives in the limelight.

Through a series of interviews, a recent critical documentary likens the business corporation to everything from the Communist Party to a majestic inspiring eagle. "The Corporation," directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot, is based on co-creator Joel Bakan's book, "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power." The Canadian film follows the historical rise of the corporation as a whole, examining its pursuit of power and domination.

Overall, the tone of the film is predictable, but unexpected remarks make it interesting enough to find time for viewing. The interaction between the images and dialogue are civil enough that the film is not preposterous, or merely an attack.

Candid honesty from even the pro-big-business folks is simultaneously promising and nauseating. However, sickening images of birth defects and foaming rivers due to corporate negligence had most of the audience gasping rather than snickering.

The weakness is that "The Corporation" reiterates what most people already know — that corporations have a tremendous amount of power that can be dangerous.

What's lacking in the film is a feasible strategy for curbing that power.

You can't turn away from the FBI's top consulting psychologist on psychopaths, Dr. Robert Hare, one of the intriguing interview subjects.

"The corporation is the prototypical psychopath," says Hare.

It meets several criteria that define a psychopath: Callous unconcern for the feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness through repeated lying and conning of others for profit, incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors.

Howard Zinn, an author and historian, claims that the 14th Amendment -- meant to secure freedom for slaves -- applied rights to capital property while stripping people of their rights. Out of 307 lawsuits involving the 14th Amendment, only 19 cases were brought by African Americans. The remainder were brought by corporations alleging that they, as "legal persons," were being violated under the Equal Protection clause.

Throughout the interview sequence that included CEOs, a corporate spy and whistleblowers, there are warning signs of the various harms attributable to the corporation. These include harm to workers through layoffs, union busters and factory fires, and harm to the public through pollution, toxic waste and synthetic chemicals.

With a swing back in history to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the honesty of commodities trader Carlton Brown is stinging. He says that as two planes crashed and killed thousands of people in the twin towers, traders only thought about "the blessing in disguise": How much is gold up?

"We couldn't wait for the bombs to rain down on Saddam," Brown says. "We were excited for him to start causing problems."

Highlighted in the film are two reporters, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, who were fired from Fox News's investigative team after refusing to submit to Fox's demands to rewrite a story that would lose advertising dollars for the network. Wilson and Akre maintain that Fox tried to buy them out in an attempt to silence their story about rBGH, a synthetic hormone used to increase cows' metabolism that ends in painful infection and antibiotics that possibly seep into milk.

"We'll tell you what the news is," is what Wilson is told by one Fox executive.

"The Corporation" is a provocative grass-roots campaign to give the power back to actual individuals. The blend of interview subjects is a left-leaning platform but still successful in representing diverse opinion and experience.

At the moment, the film is in limited release but will continue to open in more regions in the coming months. It is the winner of numerous audience awards and was named one of the top ten films of the year at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism