The Corporation

The Corporation is a critical documentary film that explores the negative effects of corporations in society. This film made me personally want to stop buying from big corporations, so in that sense I guess it accomplished it's goal. At the same time though I know I'm not going to stop buying from corporations any time soon. They have so much control over us and so much power over us it's insane. The film mentions how corporations don't have the ability to feel guilt, and I think this idea works the same with consumers. Such a large percentage of consumers buy from corporations, but even though we may be aware of the consequences we're causing we don't put the blame on ourselves when maybe we should.

This documentary puts most of the blame on the corporation itself and after going through a checklist comes to the conclusion that the corporation is equivalent to traits of a psychopath. These traits include "callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to the social norms and respect for the law." (wikipedia.com) The main point I noticed was how this film instilled the fear factor to help the audience realize the severity of large scale corporations. The music was like that found in grim, devastating moments of movies, like in times of death. The music helps make you feel sad, shocked, and horrified throughout the film.

I also noticed that they showed a lot of old black and white clips when they were trying to make many of their points even though it's supposed to be a modern-day outlook. I think they may have done this to show that corporations have been around for a long time and if we don't do something now and if we keep putting it off nothing is ever going to change. I thought their examples of IBM's role in the Holocaust as well as the example of the man talking about 9/11 added to the film and had good impact. This really showed how important profit is to corporations because it showed them more concerned about money than people's lives.

The part about BGH also had a great impact on me. They are overproducing milk and yet they are still injecting cows with this harmful hormone so they will produce more. Cows are getting sick, extra bacteria is getting into the milk, and there is a risk of people getting sick. I don't understand why they would continue to use this product, and it made me realize corporations really do only care about one thing. Also the part about false news getting through on Fox made me upset. It made me feel like the idea is every business for itself and don't worry about how we are effecting people's lives. This is what the film was trying to prove.

I could go into more aspects of the film that I thought helped with the representation they were trying to make. The workers getting paid so little for their labor and the people who were not allowed to drink water were other good example. Even though it's true this film was rather bias I think it had to be to get that extreme effect on people that it wanted. I think it was successful and was an eye-opening documentary that did what it set out to do.