The Corporation

(Movie Review)

This is one of those movies I really should have seen a long time ago, but didn't, mostly because it is hard to find these kind of independent movies in Japan. (Ah, Japan, my standard excuse for everything). In fact because I was out of the country, I didn't even hear about it until Phil wrote about it on his blog about a year ago.

This is a very powerful documentary. My biggest fear is that, like a lot of independent documentaries, the people who need to watch it the most aren't going to be interested, and it will end up mostly speaking to the converted.

If you haven't seen this film yet, some enterprising soul has put the whole thing on Youtube, so all you have to do is click on this link to view it.

The film makers apparently have some connections, because lots of famous people agreed to speak on this film, including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore. (In fact a little bit of internet research shows the film maker Mark Achbar is also responsible for the Chomsky documentary "Manufacturing Consent"--Which is also a must see and is available at the Grand Rapids downtown public library).

Chomsky in this movie is wonderfully eloquent and articulate as always. In fact its a pity they didn't use him more than they did, but I guess it helps to have a variety of viewpoints.

Michael Moore has become a bit of a polemical figure, and I think his credibility has been compromised, so I'm not sure his fame is really an asset to this film, but I think everything he said in this film was true as far as it went.

The film touches on a variety of issues, such as sweatshop labor, the world bank, free trade, environmental problems, health and safety problems, corporate media control, anti-trust and monopoly violations, child advertising and corporate propaganda, et cetera. Each of these could well be its own documentary in its own right. This film does the job of pulling them all together and makes a solid case that our current system is broken, but I think this strength is also its greatest weakness, in that none of these issues are really examined as thoroughly as they could be.

As a result this film works as a general overview or perhaps outline for the concerned viewer who wants to use this as a starting base to learn more. But, aside from a few outrageous examples on each point, I'm not entirely sure they are able to sufficiently back up a lot of their secondary points. I think they're right, but I'm not sure everything is presented as air-tight as it could be given the vast variety of topics covered and the two hour time limit.

For example the protest against Free Trade Agreement in Quebec is presented as a case of the poor verse the elites, which I believe it was, but for someone not already familiar with the issues behind free trade there was very little background information given as to why the protesters are against it.

And although the film makes a powerful critique that the present system is broken, the solutions are pretty muddled. Although the film never uses the word "anarchism", some of the activist portrayed in the film advocate community control of the corporations, which would be a form of anarcho-Communism. At other times the film veers more towards advocating reformist capitalism, such as increased government regulations, or even just the current model with increased social consciousness. Also at times the film suggests that most of today's capitalist problems are not caused by the concentration of capital, but by the structure of a corporation itself, as if things would be better of if the means of production were still owned by individuals.

The result is a film that felt very powerful and convincing while I was in the heat of the moment viewing it, but afterwards left me slightly confused as to what exactly the main point of it was.

Still definitely worth watching though, if nothing else just because of the list of outrageous corporate abuses that this film is able to detail in 2 hours (and heaven knows they could have done another 200 hours if they wanted).

Somewhat nostalgic as well, because they have footage from the Quebec demonstration I attended in April 2001 (and let me plug one more time the Media Mouse video we put together on this demonstration). Also it featured the adbusters corporate-American flag campaign, which Media Mouse also took part in during the summer of 2001.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
After the Boston tea party, as far as tea drinking itself was concerned, many colonists, in Boston and elsewhere in the country, pledged to keep away from the drink as a protest, turning instead to "Balsamic hyperion" (made from raspberry leaves) and other herbal infusions. This social protest movement away from tea drinking was not, however, long-lived.

Link of the Day
Military Recruiting Protest Calls for "Supporting the Troops" by Ending the Occupation of Iraq

The Corporation: Movie Review (Scripted)