Spartz+Annotation+4

Annotation #4 10/10/12 //The Corporation//

//The Corporation// was directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar and was released in 2004. The focus of the movie was on how corporations are so focused on profits that they don’t realize how they are affecting the environment and local areas. They say that the people who make up the corporations are not to blame; it’s the corporation as a unit that’s to blame. The argument was defended by covering many different angles touching on almost every sustainability problem that we have considered. There were many interviews with various people from many different companies. The only things that the documentary was lacking was possibly more interviews from CEO’s or shareholders perspectives and a few more numbers to back up the claims. There were a few supporting figures, but not very many. The positive side was that the movie did not, in my opinion, try to overly skew the views of the CEO’s. Obviously it happened a little bit, but that was because the movie was supposed to convince us that corporations are bad for society and the environment as they are run now. I liked the imagery and thought everything was very informational. I also liked how subtitles were used instead of dubbing which helps with trusting the accounts of those individuals more. The film definitely had plenty of emotional appeal with all of the first accounts of how corporations were basically screwing people over without consumers being aware of it. Overall, I thought that as a piece of media, the film was very effective.

As mentioned above, this film covered as many aspects as it could about why corporations as they stand now are unsustainable. The primary ones that I found were economic, behavioral/cultural, and media based. As the movie was talking about corporations, economics was an inevitable talking point. A corporation is worried about its bottom line; it isn’t worried about anything beyond that. The CEO is supposed to work along that thought since that’s his job. The movie talked about how corporations want to make short term profits for their stakeholders. I think this is a legitimate argument because I don’t believe that investors ever tend to think long term (of course that does depend on how one defines the two). Large businesses are also profitable by not being concerned about long term affects of their products by making others pay off their “unexpected” consequences. The film makes it obvious that it doubts that corporations have no clue about their impacts on health and the environment. It also displayed how it thought that many corporations benefit financially by having someone else clean up their messes. While corporations may feel this way, the people who work for them may not and in fact they may be the ones getting hurt. This ties into behavioral and cultural trends. If people have jobs, they will tend to do what is asked of them in order to keep their positions. This works the same way with consumers as well. “If it makes your life better, just say thanks.” That seems to be the main thought process by consumers. They don’t tend to consider long term investments, if something is cool and new, why not get it? Media does not help this thought process as it is working to encourage sales of products. Even if it isn’t directly advertising, if it isn’t reporting problems with products, in my mind, it might as well be promoting them. Advertising is such a large part of life and the survivability of a company now. There are a lot of studies being done by corporations on the best ways to have their products marketed in order to increase sales. The U.S. alone is spending 12 billion dollars a year in advertising. It seems that the most effective way to sell something these days is to advertise a way of life that may be desirable to a certain audience. Clearly the film addresses consumers as it points out that the only way to remedy this situation is to stop buying into products produced by corporations that you don’t follow what one considers to be good business practices. The other alternative is to become involved in government and attempt to prevent corporations from acting like this in the first place.

There were plenty of compelling arguments made throughout the movie. Until the environment becomes a commodity, no one will worry about it. I thought this was interesting and seeing how now everyone is plugged in more these days, communicating through advertising may be the only way to have people listen and understand. I also thought that it was interesting that in the interview with the head of Shell, he said that a CEO had to be seen as a constructive member of society, but he did want to look out for the environment. I was confused as to why those things aren’t seen as the same, or at least connected ideas. This convinces me that there is a lack of education in society in general if people can’t see why the taking care of the environment is necessary to maintain our way of life. I also thought that it was an interesting argument to make about how corporations can’t experience guilt. It makes sense as businesses are non-living entities. It seems to be a scary concept however, as that means that corporations are unlikely to have any sort of compassion for their customers. I disagree at that point though. If a corporation doesn’t at least seem to care about its customers, they can’t build up a reputation and image that seems worthy to buy from. If the reputation does not exist the businesses can’t succeed which would result in its own self destruction. I also did not like the connection that was made about Columbine occurring close to Lockheed Martin. I feel that just because many people in the area work for the weapons manufacturer, does not justify a explaining away the parents being a bad influence on their child. I just thought that was an unfair accusation and a generalization that did not contribute anything beneficial to the argument the documentary was trying to make.

This film caused me to question some things. The first was: who funded the film? In one of the interviews in the movie, it was clear that some corporations are ok with airing these sorts of films as they believe that no will actually go do anything about it. I was not able to find too much, other than non-profit and private sources of funding (Corporation). I was still confused as to why some of these corporations allowed their names to be presented in the ways that they were. This begged the next question: what did they do about it since the time of the movie’s release? Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything about this. The only thing even remotely negative I found were complaints that the movie was too long and it was like preaching to the choir (Rotten).

Resources: “Film Credits.” TheCorporation.com. Accessed: 10/10/12. Updated: 2012. <[]>. “The Corporation Reviews.” Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed 10/10/12. Updated 2009. <[]>.