The Corporation Reaction Paper

The Corporation is a documentary by University of British Colombia law professor Joel Balkan and directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar. It is a thorough explanation of the history of and current state of corporations in the United States specifically. The movie begins by explaining what corporate personhood is and how it came to be about. Corporate personhood is essentially an artificial personhood that corporations use to receive protections from the government equal to those granted to actual human beings. Since a corporation is an individual it can also discharge debt and go insolvent at no financial loss to shareholders. Corporations gained person hood off of a loose interpretation of a court case saying that the 14th amendment applied to corporations, thus granting them personhood status. In a humorous way, the documentary then looks to diagnose our corporations using the DSM-IV, which is the universal measure by which non-neurotypical people are assessed. Based on such qualities as not feeling guilt, being deceptive, and not having empathy, corporations are given the diagnosis of Psychopathy by the film. These qualities of corporations obviously only apply by personifying a corporation and are not because they are sentient entities, but due to the nature of corporations their resulting effects could be seen as results of the ascribed behaviors. Since a corporations one purpose is to benefit its shareholders and bottom line, there are many adverse effects on, as the film stated, the stakeholders, or the people who inhabit society and the world at large with these companies. One of the biggest problems with having large, powerful companies with no concern for any externalities it is responsible for creating or caring for, is the almost violent way that people of less developed or less wealthy countries are exploited. Since the market globalized, corporations have been able to outsource their labor to countries such as China and Indonesia, paying their workers very little to have the largest possible profit margins. This is the corporation using its massive capital to generate more in ways that are not only accessible to poorer companies and individuals, but cruel to the workers. On top of not receiving anywhere near proportionally fair compensation for their work, the workers are usually housed in dangerous work environments due to volatile nature of any chemicals they may work with or the simple lack of observance of manufacturing processes. This also extends to animals who become involved in search of the ultimate payout to shareholders. They are used for experiments which can cause them great pain, suffering, and death. The movie talks about Monsanto and the bovine growth hormones it used when there was already a surplus in milk production. Not only did the hormone harm the cows, it may also be potentially unhealthy for humans to consume. The next logical step for our moneyed artificial people was to use their capital to silence news reports about the possible dangers of milk that comes from drugged cows. Since effectively all the news in the United States comes from privatized sources and are largely owned by Rupert Murdoch, the task of silencing the reports was so easy that our courts revoked whistleblower status and the protection earned from that from rightful whistleblower Jane Akre and went even farther to say that news companies can lie

as much as they want, no matter any harm that may cause to society, in order to make as much money as possible. The film also talks about how the capitalist corporation and the society it nurtures is the forceful, driving force behind climate change and global warming. As long as its the cheapest option, corporations will willfully use the most pollutant processes and chemicals in the manufacture of their goods. The resulting products often continually perpetuate pollution too, in the instance of automobiles especially and electronics which use large amounts of energy. Any acute environmental damage, or externalities in market terminology, are mitigated by society and government since we are subservient to our corporations and are afraid to hold the accountable for their damaging existence outside of the occasional, laughable fine in order to maintain some semblance of fairness. The film lists many corporations that have paid small pittance for their misdoings, from health problems to trading with enemy states of the nation. The film then tells the story behind IBM providing the Nazi Regime with its punch card computers in order to tabulate their genocide. While they had an IBM executive try to hand wave that away by saying they only sold the computers without knowing the customer, when hard evidence was provided that showed they would service the punch card computers at every concentration camp and provided a picture with Hitler himself sitting at a table with the founder of IBM. This story really does well to illustrate how insatiable the hunger for more and more capital is. As someone who had heard a lot of the information presented in the film before, I thoroughly enjoyed it even if it was more in a reaffirming sense than a moment of epiphany. I strongly feel that corporations, and the capitalistic nation that originally spawned them, are pushing us in the wrong direction and are the source of many ills in the world today. Its truly astounding how pervasive the harm is, from child labor all the way to misogynistic and patriarchal television programs and commercials that are defining what we know as gender. The movie touched upon how these corporations are basically all run by rich white men, which should be unsurprising to anyone paying attention, but I feel that really says a lot about the institutionalized gender and racial inequality that we still are dealing with today. How can we truly expect to move forward socially if we have these companies exploiting and thus galvanizing such societal ilk, and if the people in charge are at the very least ignorant of the damaging social effects of their advertising and media they create due to their privileged position, how can we expect real change? The fact that capital can be and is constantly being used to subvert our democracy is also something that everyone should be incredibly troubled by. To know that our politicians are constantly and furtively voting on the behalf of their sponsoring companies bottom line as opposed to their constituencys will is problematic to say the least. Overall, I feel the film The Corporation is one everyone should see since these problems affect everyone except for the rich white men running things at the top. It is very thorough in explaining just why corporations are intrinsically harmful and why we cant continue to let things continue as they are now, since the behavior of corporations will not change so long as there is money to be made. It seems as though from the Occupy movement more people have

become aware of the massive disparity of wealth in our country and have successfully at least figured out the general idea of why things are the way they are. Still, it is disheartening to see that this documentary is almost ten years old and our corporations have only gained more power and the difference between the haves and have nots has only grown.