michaellyonsthecorporation


 * Title:** The Corporation
 * Directors:** Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot
 * Release year:** 2003


 * What is the central argument or narrative of the film?**

This film argues that corporations are “monsters” trying to devour as much profit as possible at anyone’s or anything’s expense. While traditionally society has looked upon and rewarded corporations and their executives as “captains of industry” this film demonstrates how they are better defined as “plunderers of the earth.” Corporations have developed into very powerful entities within our modern society and this film highlights the immoral nature in which many of these companies operate and how they are contributing to the lack of sustainability within the world.


 * What sustainability problems does the film draw out?**

This film shows how corporations are not only causing sustainability problems but they are themselves a sustainability problem. Corporations are legally bound to put the stockholders rights above all else including the public welfare. Economic interests become their bottom line over the environment and the welfare of their workers or the community. The pressure is on these corporations to make profits immediately and quickly at whatever cost. This is often done through externalization of costs. Externalities are how decisions affect third party individuals not involved in the actual decision making process; individuals and ecosystems receiving the negative drawbacks and waste caused by the corporations cutting costs and cutting corners. Corporations often are able to do this within the law but if the chance of getting caught is low and cost of getting caught is less than the cost to conform to the law this too becomes a business decision. Corporations remain resistant to becoming sustainable or changing operation methods to bring about benefits to the community. Deceitfulness, lying and covering up have become increasingly standard corporate practice in order to continue profit increases.

Many of these externalities have caused ecological and public health sustainability problems. Cancer rates have been steadily increasing with half of men and one third of women in our modern society being diagnosed with some form of cancer throughout their lives. The Monsanto Corporation is rampantly selling bovine antibiotics within the cattle industry which is increasing cases of antibiotic resistant infections among humans. This same company that’s involved with our food is also responsible for developing “Agent Orange” which is a poison gas that caused numerous birth defects and cancer among citizens of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. As far as working conditions the film showed one example of a son of a DuPont employee born without eyes as a result of the worker’s exposure to fungicide. On the large or small scale many corporations are committing harm to human health and their workers through chemicals, waste and pollution that they produce and emit into our environment. Some of the more negligent corporations have a seemingly reckless disregard for the safety of others and their workers are often exposed to very dangerous levels of chemicals without the company receiving any culpability. One speaker in the film stated that every living system and life support system on earth is in decline.

The size and lobbying power of these companies is also a significant sustainability problem. They have a large power to influence organizations across the globe including politics. In the film it was pointed out how this can become a media and informational sustainability problem as corporations have the power to filter out news that becomes unfavorable with their interests. Monsanto threats to Fox news eliminated a story from being aired about the “bovine antibiotic” effects. The investigative reporters that prepared the story were bribed to keep quiet and their report was edited 83 times over eight months before the story was eliminated entirely from production. Eventually the issue went to court upon firing of the reporters and Fox won out with no repercussions. Especially in modern technical society as the number of news sources reaching the average person has become largely consolidated to a small number of television stations it can become a serious issue in raising awareness about sustainability problems when corporations have this ability to control what is reported. The Supreme Court also recently ruled that living things produced in a corporate laboratory may be patented. This effectively allows corporations to own living organisms and entire developed species further increasing their power within society.


 * What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?**

One very persuasive part of the film was the wage differentials between workers and executives and the profit percentages that are made from products through third world labor. For example it was mentioned that a Liz Claiborne jacket that sells for over 170 dollars retail costs the company only 74 cents in labor to be produced by El Salvadorian workers. Similarly Nike employees in the Dominican Republic are paid less than 1/10th of 1% of the final product value. The problem is that these countries welcome these jobs because they need something to prevent people from starving. If corporations paid these people more realistic wages it could hold great potential for growth within these poverty stricken countries.

I also found it interesting that American companies continued to sell products in Germany during the Hitler Regime of World War II. Coke developed Fanta which was created specifically to be sold in Germany during the war and Ford and GM (as Opel) continued to leave markets open in Germany throughout the war. IBM even went as far as designing and selling “punch card” computers used within the Nazi camps to keep track of prisoners’ status and profile. The profits from these were even recovered after the war when the purpose of these “camps” became well known. These are blatant examples of the lack of moral restraint or loyalty to the community that these companies have.


 * What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?**

The documentary overall was quite convincing but it was built largely upon the premise that if our country desires to consider corporations as a person within the law than many of their characteristics would make them typical of a psychopath. This was an effective organizational tool for the movie but in my opinion became slightly corny and took away from the actual information that was being said. The statistics and examples stood well on their own and were convincing without labeling corporations as psychopaths.


 * What additional information does the film compel you to seek out? Where do you want to dig deeper and what connections do you want to make with other issues, factors, problems, etc?**

The film compelled me to seek out more information about the news industry. I would be interested in knowing how involved unrelated corporations such are Monsanto are with what is and isn’t broadcasted into the news. I would like to be able to watch news with confidence that what I am hearing hasn’t been heavily edited to suit the needs of various corporations.


 * What audiences does the film best address? What kind of imagination is fostered in viewers? Do you think the film is likely to change the way viewers think about and act on environmental problems?**

Many of these problems could be solved from within the corporation itself through the development of a morally guided company. This fact would make corporate executives as well as other workers at various positions throughout the corporation a good audience for this film in order to bring about changes to the system. Everyone within these corporations can’t know about this corruption. I am forced to believe there are not that many people that would willingly work or participate in some of these policies and actions.


 * What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?**

Accountability needs to be established. The competitive advantage of listening to the needs of the people has to increase. Companies need to develop behind the concept of serving and benefiting the consumer, not making the most money as possible from the consumer. If companies remain unwilling to change their operation then these decisions should possibly be made by government to eliminate moral gray areas that can develop. If such a dominant institution fails to develop moral dilemmas within its decision making processes we need someone else to control the moral problems they face and that they create. For example Gap has allowed third party monitoring of its factories in El Salvador being the 1st company ever to do so. A point of intervention exists within the shielding of leaders in the company from liability from corporate problems. If those making the decisions were held personally accountable for environmental or health issues caused by their company then they would undoubtedly take these into greater consideration in their business plan. California legislative also recently ruled it possible for the general population to rule a corporate charter to be ended due to egregious behavior. This would be a strong solution to many of these problems if a corporation that was not benefiting society could be essentially put out of commission by the general public.


 * What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental education value?**

The film showed little in the way of positive corporate initiatives in regards to sustainability. Although many companies are inherently unsustainable and corrupt there are also some responsible organizations both profit and non-profit which do a lot of good things for society. I think the film showed the viewer just how powerful corporations can be in our society but brings about more distrust of corporations than the needed call to action to change some of these patterns. Also portions of the film were skipped due to time constraints.