The Documentary The Corporation.docx

The documentary The Corporation, directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar and produced in 2004, although bias, opens many doors for discussion in regard to capitalism and the role of corporations in our lives. I found the documentary to be presented professionally, and filled with legitimate facts more so than extreme opinion. The documentary truly outlines the "all-pervasive" role the corporation has taken as the "world's dominant institution".

The film opens with a critique on the media's most widely-used metaphor to describe certain corporations as "a few bad apples". Among many newscasters quoted, George Bush is also shown belittling unjust corporations to a few bad apples. The documentary takes this and runs, so to speak, through exemplifying the short-sighted and belittling nature of this metaphor in describing the majority of the corporate world and its monopolizing, exploitive capabilities and tendencies. The film deems Dr. Frankenstein's creation to be analogous with the rise of corporations. The documentary illustrates corporations to have started as something for the "public good". The film discusses original chartered corporations with clear stipulations to avoid the multitude of injustices apparent today. This background information creates the outline for how far corporations have strayed from their role as a social betterment.

The film outlines the turning point to have occurred during the signing of the fourteenth amendment, this amendment was pushed between 1890 and 1910 in the name of free slaves. The amendment allots equal rights for individuals in terms of property, capital and the pursuit of happiness. The film highlights the fact that corporations skewed the amendment to include all corporations as individuals, thus allotting the rights of a person to a corporation. This in turn takes the blame off of many individuals leading a corporation and instead views them as one entity. The documentary quotes a white, male CEO of a company stating: "No soul to save, no body to incarcerate" this illustrates the danger in deeming corporations as persons. The film utilizes the film maker Michael Moore, he is first pictured stating that corporations have "one incentive: make as much money as possible". Moore makes the interesting distinction that there is no marker for "enough", how much money is "enough" for a billionaire corporation?

The film places most emphasis on the "harms" of corporations, dividing segments into slides illustrating particular harms. The first segment depicts corporate harms to workers in the form of layoffs, union busts, factory fires, sweat shops etc. The film continues to outline harms to the environment in the form of dangerous production methods, toxic waste, pollution, synthetic chemicals, etc. The rise of synthetic chemicals is highlighted indicating this allows corporations to make everything at a lower cost, which as stated by the film is the monetary bottom line for all corporations. The documentary holds the corporate industry solely responsible for the United States' cancer epidemic.

The film also focuses on harms to animals: habitat deconstruction, factory farming, and animal experimentation which in my mind was the most influential part of the documentary: the discussion on the company Monsanto and animal hormones. The documentary discusses data showing the negative ramifications of the wide use of Monsanto products. The product Polisic is shown advertised for a needed increase in farming income, followed by proof of infection spreading to the milk we consume at home. Other hormones were discussed that in terms of humans affect the curability of infections in that a resistance to antibiotics is built. The example of staph infection was given specifically and our difficulty to maintain a cure due to resistance to antibodies. Back to Monsanto, the documentary stated that persons in the U.S. were able to sue the company $80million as compensation for health damages such as cancer caused by the company's Agent Orange used in Vietnam. The film listed a multitude of companies sued for over $1million in fines, however never mentioned in the press.

Most shocking in the discussion of Monsanto, is the film's coverage of a court case in which two Fox news reporters stood up for their right to serve as a valid news source. Two workers are depicted to have been assigned by Fox to change and hide their findings on the Monsanto companies' injustices and their inability to speak the truth. Rather than a happy ending, after hours of efforts, many letters, etc. the exworkers received $425,000 as a settlement however only later to be withdrawn with shocking reasoning. The case closed with the conclusion that it is not technically illegal to produce false news. The workers lose and the corporation wins, thus pus still remains in our milk and most people, save those fortunate to hear the uncensored truth, will continue to drink it with smiles.

The documentary film titled The Corporation attempts to present to the viewer different facets of this institution. The points of view presented in the mainstream media are quite different from the actual realities associated with business corporations. The documentary is based on a book written by Joel Bakan titled The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, and is made by the team comprising of Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. As the title of the book suggests, business corporations are all too often guilty of pursuing profits over the interests of people and the environment. This thesis is suitably demonstrated in the documentary through a compilation of interviews, film clips and case studies from the past. Divided in three one-hour episodes, the documentary succeeds in showing to the viewer the various negative aspects of a business corporation, which often gets little attention in the mainstream media and popular discourse. One of the major themes of the documentary film is the damage done to the environment by large business corporations. With commercial profitability being their primary motive, many large corporations neglect to address the negative impact on the environment. For example, many paper mills in the U.S.A dump toxic effluents from their processing plants into the nearby stream or river, causing irreparable damage to the local ecosystem and also increasing risk to human beings. The other criticism leveled against corporations is their tendency to exploit cheap labor in Third World regions. A classic example of this is the substandard wages paid to workers of Nike in Indonesia, who get less than one percent of the marked price of the goods they manufacture. Another well-publicized case is that of Monsanto Corporation, which introduced into the market a bovine hormone injection which had proven unsafe for both animals and humans during the testing stage. Cognizant of this risk factor, Health Canada had banned the injection in Canada – a move that was repeated in many European countries as well. Only in the United States was the injection allowed to

enter the markets, which eventually caused much suffering for the animals and put the safety and wellbeing of consumers at risk. In the case of Monsanto, the Fox News network refused to broadcast an investigative story about the company due to fears of loss in advertisement revenue. The essence of this situation is concisely written by Grant Ledgerwood in his book Environment Ethics and the Corporation as follows: “The 1,000 largest corporations in the world drive international investment. Thereby, these businesses have a more direct impact on planetary environment than do governments. Reflecting a growing awareness of this impact, leaders of international business must accept responsibility for the environment. Moreover, business has an impact on cities and human habitats which are ever more urban; therefore, exploring the urban dimension of how business manages the environment is also important.” (Ledgerwood, 2000, p.2) The other important theme covered in the documentary is the psychological assessment of a corporation’s traits, since they are given legal rights and privileges on par with that of citizens. The conclusion drawn by this psychological profiling is quite astounding, for it was ascertained that the corporation is psychopathic in nature. This psychopathic nature is by no means inevitable, but was rather devised by corporate lawyers wanting to please their clients and a judiciary that lacked foresight and restraint. Noam Chomsky, a noted public intellectual who was interviewed in the film, draws attention to this mistake made by the Supreme Court when in the late nineteenth century it granted corporations all the rights that a flesh-and-blood human being was entitled to. This crucial event would have a profound impact on twentieth century history as the corporation would displace the nation-state as the most powerful institution in world politics. Sufficient evidence is provided in the documentary from published reports, firsthand accounts of employees, interviews of industry leaders, public intellectuals and social activists. Hence it can be stated that the documentary has been effective in conveying its message in an objective manner without compromising on facts and evidence. Its central arguments and the conclusions arrived thereupon are both logically sound and persuasive. What makes the film even more convincing is the fact that people

from fields as diverse as the academia and the industry are interviewed, which otherwise would have constituted bias on part of the film makers.

Review Joseph G. Ramsey the Corporation. Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot. The Edges of "Externality" 1. Following Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super-Size Me!, the two docudrama hits of last season, comes The Corporation, bearing accolades from not only the Sundance Film Festival, but Premiere magazine, the LA, and New York Times. Directed by Mark Achbar (previous co-director of Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) and Jennifer Abbot, and based on the book by Joel Bakan -- The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power and Profit -- this radical Canadian documentary features Left-notables such as Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Naomi Klein, as well as thirtyodd lesser-known corporate experts: "CEOs, whistle blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns, and pundits," as the film's promotional blurb proudly declares. As both a critical analysis and a dramatic indictment of the "dominant institution of our era," The Corporation probes far deeper than Michael Moore's and Morgan Spurlock's work. The film merits serious attention and deserves a truly super-sized audience (one that, unfortunately, it seems unlikely to get in the US). 2. Beginning with a fast-paced overview of the recent explosion of corporate crime scandals, the movie proceeds to satirize the dominant media's diagnosis of this scandal "crisis" as the product of a few -- OK, a few dozen -- "bad apples" stinking up otherwise healthy Corporate America. The film breaks down this

"bad apple" metaphor, demonstrating again and again how the "rotting" of corporate "apples" is little but the open flowering of the corruption present in these institutions' very corporate seeds. 3. In its early sequences, The Corporation examines how corporations acquired the status of legal "persons" following the US Civil War, ironically via the Constitutional amendments aimed at guaranteeing equal citizenship to newly freed African Americans. Wittily, the film then charts the corporate "person's" behavior using an authentic psychiatric checklist from World Health Organization: "Callous unconcern for the feelings of other?"-Check. "Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships?" -- Check. "Reckless regard for the safety of others?" -- Check. "Deceitfulness; repeated lying and conniving of others for profit?" -- Check. "Incapacity to experience guilt?" -- Check. "Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior?" -- Check. Check. Check. Check. As the evidence mounts, the damning diagnosis emerges: the corporation, examined as a "person," is a "psychopath." 4. "Unaccountable, private tyrannies" is how Noam Chomsky describes them -- rather less playfully -likening the institution to slavery, which deformed slave-owners -- whatever their benevolent intentions or particular personalities -- to behave brutally and inhumanely. From its early moments The Corporation thus moves beyond superficial demonization-or fetishization -- of "bad" corporations -- Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Weapons, Big Fast Food -- towards a critical, historical and institutional analysis of corporations' very structure and nature. In this sense the film goes further than either Fahrenheit 9/11 (anti-Bush, anti-Big Oil and anti-Big Weapons) or SuperSize Me! (anti-Big Fast Food). 5. But not only does the film analyze the origins, history, behavior patterns, and social and environmental effects of corporations; it is also manages to be an entertaining movie, one that is creatively organized and well-produced. Though it relies heavily on individual interviews, for instance, The Corporation seldom drags, periodically picking up the pace with clever editing and help from a strong beat-driven soundtrack. 6. Conceptually, The Corporation focuses its critique closely on the idea of "externalities," that is, the external -- often undesirable -- effects of business transactions between two parties (often two corporations) upon an un-consulted third party (often the surrounding community). Indeed, the film presents a devastating barrage of such "unintended" corporate attacks on the environment, public health,

and public access to information, while frequently demonstrating how even those who are planning and ordering these attacks are themselves "personally" opposed to them; i.e. their actions as slaves to the corporate bottom line contradict their own beliefs as private citizens. Yet in keeping with its "external" approach, The Corporation tends to focus more on the "unaccountability" of corporations and less on their intrinsic "tyranny" as capitalist enterprises, more on the "external" damage done by these institutions than on the internal exploitation and repression which they carry out within their factory walls and office hallways, especially with respect to their labor forces. 7. In fact, while this film boasts a diversity of points-of-view, the perspective of one major group of "corporate insiders" is notably absent: that of the workers whose labor makes these corporations run. 8. For the most part, the only corporate "insiders" the film interviews are CEOs and managers, with the exception of two news-reporter "whistle-blowers" from Fox 13 News in Florida (whose story, I must note, dramatically demonstrates the willingness of the corporate media producers to censor the "news" to fit its corporate sponsors' interests). But no factory workers, no union organizers, no cubicled white-collar employees appear, at least not for long. 9. To be fair, "harm to employees" is one of the "file categories" examined by the film-makers during their mock psychiatric exam of the corporation as a "person." Yet there is little to no attention paid to the self-activity of the workers within and against these corporations, or to the role that the state plays in disabling this self-activity. In fact, the only example of labor activism with which we are confronted is that of the American National Labor Council's external expose of sweatshop and child-labor in Kathy Lee Gifford's Latin American garment factories. Though the exploitation of child-labor in third world countries here stands exposed, the workers remain generally passive victims, apparently yet another "externality" for the corporation. However, their status as "internalities" with the potential power to transform -- or even to shut down or to take over -- the corporation from within is virtually ignored. 10. Related to "externality," the other central concept of the film's anti-corporate critique is privatization, the corporate take-over of previously public resources. From the human genome, to the inside of children's imaginations, to Iraqi oil, to the public water-supply, to the song "Happy Birthday," the directors bring us a slew shocking and outrageous examples of corporations crossing the line -- whether "the line"

be ethical, communal, moral, religious, or legal -- to take control and to profit off of what instinct or tradition tells us should be free for all. Clearly nothing is sacred, no line impermeable, nothing off-limits to these out-of-control creatures. 11. In addition to these lines of analysis, impressively, Howard Zinn and Chomsky use their camera time to foreground corporations' historical complicity in the rise of fascism. For instance, they point out how in Europe during the 1930s, in the US during the Roosevelt reign, as well as throughout the 20th century in Latin America, major corporations have routinely supported right-wing coups and dictatorships. As Chomsky notes, it makes sense: fascists have after all been great defenders of corporate interests, repressing labor unions, destroying left-wing political parties, and issuing large and profitable military contracts. Mussolini as well as Adolf Hitler benefited greatly from corporate aide, the film shows, with IBM in particular coming in for shame for supplying and maintaining the German punch-card machines that kept track of people in the Nazi concentration and death camps, all the way through the early 1940s. 12. The extensive corporate complicity in the rise of fascism is a fact routinely excluded from US history textbooks and mainstream political discourse (a fact which alone should demand that all high school and college students in the US today see this movie). In fact even Edwin Black -- author of IBM and the Holocaust and interviewed in the film -- tends to understate the broader trend in the course of highlighting the exceptional evil of IBM. Like many writers, Black evades the underlying -- and often anticommunist and anti-union -- reasons that corporations cooperated with and supported the Nazis early on. Thus, Black's book does not so much as mention the labor unionists, socialists, and communists who were among the first to be rounded up and killed by Hitler's SS. Thankfully, with the help of the graying professors of US radicalism, however, The Corporation puts the ever-more-timely link between big business and the black-shirts back on the table. 13. Lest we become hopeless in the face of seemingly endless corporate tyranny, The Corporation closes with an examination of some of the local victories that mass movements in the third world -- as well as consumer and community movements in the US -- have won against modern-day corporate encroachments. The film pays special attention to the successful Bolivian mass movement

against water privatization, as well as to an anti-corporate town meeting in Arcata, CA, and the internal corporate reform efforts of CEO Ray Anderson. 14. In the end though, what The Corporation left me with was the stark contrast between the movement in Bolivia, which mobilized what amounted to a general strike to face down murderous police state violence (and win!) and the limited, rather unfocused victories of the Arcatans, who manage to succeed in banning fast-food chains from their city limits, not to mention the rather facile optimism and self-righteousness of American corporate reformer Ray Anderson, who hopes to clean up his carpetcorporation from within, while still maintaining its hefty profit margins. Premiere magazine no doubt has not been alone in deeming Anderson the "bona fide hero" of the movie, as a CEO who has been bornagain as an environmentalist and "still has his job." But really, although The Corporation does let Anderson give his own account of his ecological epiphany, showing him as he lectures his -- seemingly apathetic -- fellow businessmen on the need to move towards ecological business balance, it is the scenes from the streets of Bolivia -- where tens of thousands take to the streets, and where dozens are shot down for simply asserting their human right to public water -- that contain the real heroes of this film. "I see dark days ahead for my children," Bolivian activist Oscar Olivera" tells the camera, "but I have faith in the people . . . El pueblo unido, jamas hara vencido." The people united, will never be defeated. Speaking softly in Spanish to the camera, Olivera's comments are hopeful, yet not naïve or selfserving. Indeed, his words remind me of Italian Marxist and communist organizer Antonio Gramsci, who, from within his fascist prison-cell in the 1930s, called for "pessimism of the intellect," but "optimism of the will." 15. Still, while this remarkable film depicts plenty of local resistance -- from India to Canada, New York to California -- one would have liked to see The Corporation (and one would still like to see its viewers) move beyond its extensive discussion of the way that corporations routinely violate the law -- moral as well as juridical -- to a consideration of political strategy. Likewise, I believe that we need to move beyond Chomsky's assertion that corporations are simply "legal institutions," and hence theoretically capable of being restrained or even abolished by that same law, to a political discussion of the extent to which corporations have effectively taken over the law and the lawmakers as well. Major corporations after all,

practically speaking, via campaign contributions, incessant lobbying efforts, and corporate control of media discourse itself, have to a remarkable degree co-opted the leadership of both major US parties, the White House, most of the Congress, and most regulatory agencies. 16. On this note, perhaps the most conspicuous absence in The Corporation's long line of experts is corporate-raider Ralph Nader, whose biographical trajectory from long-time regulatory and reform advocate to anti-corporate political campaigner could have added a recognizably and explicitly political edge to this otherwise radical work. Without necessarily implying an endorsement of Nader's campaign, his presence could have introduced the idea that perhaps not only local direct action and agitation, but also independent, coordinated, national political action is necessary to take down these monstrous multinationals. That instead of Nader-Camejo, the The Corporation's credited and its website gesture to Moveon.orgas their sole "democracy in action" link suggests a limited left-political vision indeed. 17. But I don't want to understate the radical edges of this movie. More so than Fahrenheit 9/11, The Corporation raises fundamental problems that cannot be answered by supporting corporate-funded candidates or parties (no matter what the film directors or screen credits may tell you), but only by building forms of independent, anti-corporate, political action on a growing, increasingly mass scale. As the treatment of dissenters inside as well as outside the DNC last summer (not to mention the RNC) dramatized, such independent action is something that the Democratic establishment (not to mention the Republicans) seek to control and to co-opt, not create. 18. To me, The Corporation suggests the political impotence of establishment solutions to the current crisis or corporate domination. And while the film doesn't come to any clear conclusions about what is to be done, it does clearly show us how dire is the international need for a political praxis that goes beyond beating the Bush to unearthing, root and branch, the overgrown corporate forest that has produced him (as well as his rather wooden-looking soon-to-be-doomed opponent, John Kerry). Review The following review is presented by Congress:Member:Sterling D. Allan and Mary-Sue Haliburton of PES Network, Inc., with expansion welcome by other users of this site. (Aug. 19, 2006)

This exceptionally well-done documentary film looks at the rise of the corporate body as having the legal status of a "person" -- albeit with no conscience -- and its collective psychopathic raping of the planets' people and resources due to a greed-based bottom-line motivation. The film also touches on more recent trends within the corporate world to awaken morally and infuse ethics into the equation, to halt and then reverse the past damages that have been inflicted. The film features interviews with some of the key movers and shakers in the corporate world, as well as in the environmental and corporate polemic world, such as social critics Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore. The Corporation as a The film touches on how this status of "person" for a corporation was achieved underhandedly, a point that is explained in more depth by Thom Hartmann in his landmark, well-researched historical tour de force Unequal Protection. The author Hartmann explains how railway companies made use of a Constitution Amendment intended to protect the human rights of former slaves to confer personhood on their business interests -- without this ever having been passed by a judge. The actual legal decision went against the company, but a compliant court clerk wrote a favourable preface which has since that time been cited as a legal authority -- no one apparently having bothered to read the judge's actual words rejecting the claim! As an alleged person a Corporation is a non-biological entity, without the need to breathe air, drink water or eat food, notably without the obligation to die and -- without a conscience. According to psychological analysis criteria, the corporation's legal "person" is diagnosed as being a There was an error working with the wiki: Code[1]. The film goes through the characteristics of this personality disorder, showing point for point (see list, below) how they correspond to the typical behavior of businesses. Also documented in the film is how the fundamental aim of serving the bottom line and the shareholders' financial growth essentially requires abuse of the environment and all manner of shortcuts and exploitation. Being greed-driven, and raping the planet for profit is simply what we should expect from this kind of underlying conceptual framework, based as it was on dishonest legal shenanigans in the first

place. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda is used to illustrate the corporation's take-over of our lives, rising above governments in their power. Some interesting ramifications and consequences of rogue corporate personhood are noted by author Jane Smiley. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/ceo-president_b_27658.htmlRef.) EXCERPT: "Given what these big corporations routinely do, we have to ask, are they filled and peopled from top to bottom by ruthless monsters who care nothing about others, and also nothing about the world that we live in? Are these CEOs and CFOs and COOs and managers and researchers and stockholders so beyond human that, let's say, the deaths in Iraq and the destitution of the farmers and the tumors and allergies and obesities of children, and the melting of the Greenland ice cap and the shifting of the Gulf Stream are, to them, just the cost of doing business? Or are they just beyond stupid and blind, so that they, alone among humans, have no understanding of the interconnectedness of all natural systems?" Sample Case of Corporate Manipulation of News One of the most compelling parts of the film details manipulation of the media though financial coercion. Reporter Jane Akre is interviewed explaining how Fox Network initially encouraged her and her partner Steve Wilson to be hard-hitting and dig up the truth. However, the first story the two of them prepared was that Monsanto's Bovine Somatotropin (Bovine Growth Hormone, or BGH) was shown to have negative health implications including heightened risk of cancer. The network even promoted their news story on the air the clips are included of this promo. However, before it was to air, Monsanto's lawyers went into action. Fox then reversed itself and tried to get its reporters to change the facts of their story. Akre and Wilson refused. At one point a company manager is quoted as telling the reporters that Fox paid $30 billion for these TV stations and that gave the company the right to decide what is true. An unheard-of eighty-three rewrites ensued. Finally the intrepid couple were fired. They sued for wrongful dismissal, using their status as as whistleblowers defending the public interest as the right to know the truth.

True to the psychopathic corporate profile, Fox then took the complainants to court, finding a judge in Florida who would use a legal technicality to remove their wistleblower status. The company argued and won based on their finding that there wasn't actually any law that required the news to be the truth. As explained in detail by a sympathetic group, Organic Consumers (.org), this is the infamous "right to lie" case on which Fox proudly stands claiming vindication of its position. At the time this film was made, that was where it ended. Since then, Fox has sued Akre and Wilson. As the story is presented in the film, Akre and Wilson are the heroes. There's always another side, of course, as explained at CreativeLoafing.com. This one alleges that defiant duo were manipulating events to raise their own profile, and were making money from somewhere while presenting themselves as in need of financial help. (This could be a smear charges of financial misdealings are routinely levelled against anyone who criticizes major coporations even if the evidence has to be faked. One would have to dig further to find out what is really happening.) This site includes the following interesting paragraph: : "That inclusion is what Wilson and Akre decry as 'distortion' or depict on their website as a 'lie.' Monsanto may well have been deceptive. This is murky science, however. And companies lie to the media all the time. The reporter's job is to provide as much information as possible and let the viewer or reader decide. If the reporter feels a source isn't being candid, the solution isn't to snip the material, but to build a case with facts that expose the deception." Companies lie to the media all the time? Exactly -- and as the producers of The Corporation are outlining at length. It's up to viewers of this film, The Corporation, to assess what they are seeing, while not overlooking the fact that Canada and Britain had not approved BGH for sale. An attitude of heathy skepticism should always be in the back of our minds. Also, when viewing all televised "news" (also known as "infotainment") concerning medical and other "advances of science", we should keep in our awareness the fact that PR firms routinely prepare "news stories" about new drugs to feed to reporters, which then deliver them to the front pages of newspapers and prime time TV news. When they want to create advance demand for the new drug or chemical, pharmaceutical companies hire PR agents to stir up

interest among the public, making use of uncritical news stories as a kind of free publicity. The TV or newspaper report never analyze the scientific study in depth, much less putting it into any kind of context or perspective related to other products or procedures, especially not alternative ones. Whole trade shows are set up to facilitate these PR firms getting business from the big pharmaceutical companies. (As reported on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's IDEAS series, 2005.) So it's not just caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) but always also caveat lector (reader) and caveat spectator (viewer). Let's all keep our thinking caps on, and not simply buy all that we hear or see which is presented as news. The film documents a number of examples of severe sleaze on the part of corporations, illustrating the psychopathic nature of "person" designation and legal protection, but with no conscience, with money being the driving factor, not ethics. During World War II, Adolf Hitler would not have been able to do what he did in exterminating millions of Jews if it were not for the database assistance of the punch card technology supplied to his regime by IBM. The devices required monthly servicing by IBM technical persons, and several machines were housed in some of the most notorious concentration camps. The film documents that IBM was knowledgeable about how the machines were being put to use, and yet continued to supply the support needed to keep the technology in place. A book by Edwin Black, whose parents were victims of the holocaust, soundly exposes this episode, drawing from 100,000 source documents. See IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. Hopeful Signs Documentation presented in The Corporation underscores corporate disregard for human health, human well-being, and the environment in general. True confessions, case studies, and strategies for change are all included. This provides a powerful glimpse of what is destructive to environment and health, and by way of balance also explores a recent trend to wake up and do something about this, both through pressure from without, as well as through enlightened leadership from within the corporate world.

Some CEOs are beginning to gain moral fiber, to turn around, and then reverse the damage their corporations have inflicted on the biosphere. One of these, a carpet manufacturer, revised his business plan to mean not selling new carpets but client service in maintaining carpets, which are now modular. Only damaged parts are replaced, and the materials are recycled. This man is shown speaking to a receptive business audience about the merits of reducing environmental impact through recycling materials. Provokative, witty, informative, and even entertaining, this film deserves repeat viewing and discussion. It has been serialized and rebroadcast several times on Canadian neworks such as Vision TV (spirituality channel) and TV Ontario (educational channel).