The Corporation

The Corporation

By Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott

  • Genre: Documentary
  • Release Date: 2005-04-05
  • Advisory Rating: Unrated
  • Runtime: 2h 24min
  • Director: Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott
  • Production Company: Appian Way
  • Production Country: United States of America
  • iTunes Price: USD 7.99
  • iTunes Rent Price: USD 3.99

Description

One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. It is the dominant institution of our time. A complex, sobering, yet darkly amusing documentary, The Corporation takes its audience on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation's inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation's ascent. Based on Bakan's best-selling book, "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power", the film has achieved international critical and box office success. Winner of 10 audience awards, including Sundance, and 26 awards in total from prestigious festivals around the world, it stands as the top-grossing Canadian feature documentary of all time. The Corporation includes encounters and interviews with CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: energy, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, carpet, sporting goods, public relations, branding, news, advertising, and undercover marketing, as well as the first management guru, the first corporate-sponsored university students, a Nobel-prize winning economist, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers. The Corporation reveals that legally, a corporation is granted the status of a "person", and asks: "If that's the case, what kind of person is it?" To assess the "personality" of the corporate "person," a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. It turns out 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. A disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism meets the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath. The Corporation depicts numerous, inspiring, corporate harm reduction strategies employed by individuals and organizations working to regulate, re-write and reform this formidable societal force.

Trailer

Reviews

  • The solution

    5
    By SushiRobot
    Important movie, very accurate description of the problem. Of course they have no clue what to do about it, as the guy says at the end "I'm just hoping people will get off the sofa and do…ummm anything". In other words no plan. That won't work. The solution isn't very difficult to understand. The corporation has to be placed under the control of humanity, rather than humanity under the control of the corporation. That simply involves re-writing all the laws. The government which could write the laws however is controlled by the corporation. Which means revolution, bloodshed is the only path to success here. Humans however still don't grasp there is a war on against them and remain largely confused by the corporate propaganda.
  • Very Informative!

    4
    By KCnatureboy
    Very good information about how "the corporation" has morphed over the last 200+ years in America. Both pros and cons are presented in the documentary, but I found it to be somewhat biased at times. Overall, its worth checkin out. Definitely an "eye-opener"
  • a little ironic

    5
    By ainmosninsomnia
    you know.. this movie used to be free. thanks, iTunes.
  • Great movie

    5
    By jkane24
    This movie is meant to show the need for regulation in business. People who are saying this movie wants to destroy business are missing the true point of this movie. Must see.
  • Purchase/Rental Options Are Grayed Out - Can

    5
    By Truth_Seeker_:-)
    I want to buy this movie (The Corporation) but both the Purchase and Rental options are grayed out, making them inaccessible links. Please advise. I LOVE this movie! It confirms what I've suspected about the corporate model for a long time. Having worked in both large corporate offices and a large university clinical psychology training program, I could relate with the personality test setting for a review of a corporate "person's" mental state. Although the "person" implied in "personhood" is actually made up of lots of different people, each with their own agenda and personal issues, it's a good illustration of the non-sensical "personhood status" granted to corporations. But not all of today's corporations are sociopaths. It would be an interesting contrast to apply the same testing situation to the corporations listed in "The 100 Best Companies to Work For in America." Does being a great place to work also mean they treat their clients and the rest of society better? PS: How do I retrieve a movie that was lost from my iTunes library when I shared my library with my husband's. Everything else was just copied and sent, but one movie was actually moved to his computer. (We're no longer together.) I paid for it and would like it back. Thanks. (Can't find anywhere else to ask this specific question.)
  • collection of whiners

    2
    By stsimons
    not worth the price of admission. just a collection of ranting rather than proposing. come on people. we'd be 3rd world if it were not for corporations. few are bad, most are good. the real problem are lawyers. get rid of them and michael moore. teach positiveness not negative whining.
  • THE CORPERATION

    1
    By LIVE FREE OR DIE 1111234
    complete everybodys out to get you conspiratorial nonsence. SOCIALIST GARBAGE!
  • Pablumistic Approach to a Complex Topic

    1
    By TikkiTom
    Another one sided progressive (e.g. left) documentary limited by its ability to juxtapose the positive and negative impacts of a corporation. This could have been a fantastic documentary if it was not so one sided. Yes, many bad corporations abound (I despise Monsanto and the oil companies) but how do the producers attibute the overall increase in US per capita net worth and productivity during the same period of explosive corporate growth? Scant on hard data (very touchy feely) but did do a good job on highighting the government-corporate axis of evil.
  • VERY hard to read little white letters on black background

    3
    By SJ-
    little white letters on a black background = VERY hard, basically impossible, to read this page
  • Amazing

    5
    By Hi+
    The psycopathy of corporations, even individual participants such as the woman who found ways to manipulate... yes actually manipulate the undeveloped minds of toddlers with the end goal of altering their behavior... she was aware that what she was doing was 'off' but she was totally and complicit, not unlike a religous estacy in her demeanour as she described her role within the corporation... it's a job and that justifies anything. a terrifying film

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