The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film critical of the modern-day corporation, considering it as a class of person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychologist might evaluate an ordinary person. This is explored through specific examples.
The film charts the development of the corporation as a legal entity
from its origins as an institution chartered by governments to carry out
specific public functions, to the rise of the vast modern institutions
entitled to some of the legal rights of a person. One central theme of
the documentary is an attempt to assess the “personality” of the
corporate “person” by using diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV; Robert
Hare, a University of British Columbia Psychology Professor and FBI
consultant, compares the profile of the modern, profit-driven
corporation to that of a clinically-diagnosed psychopath. The film
focuses mostly on corporations in North America, especially in the
United States.
The film is composed of several vignettes examining and critiquing
corporate practices, and drawing parallels between examples of corporate
malfeasance and the DSM-IV’s symptoms of psychopathy, i.e. callous
unconcern for the feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring
relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others,
deceitfulness (repeated lying to and deceiving of others for profit),
incapacity to experience guilt, and failure to conform to the social
norms with respect to lawful behaviors.
Topics addressed include the Business Plot, where in 1933, the
popular General Smedley Butler exposed a corporate plot against then
U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt; the tragedy of the commons; Dwight D.
Eisenhower’s warning people to beware of the rising military-industrial
complex; economic externalities; suppression of an investigative news
story about Bovine Growth Hormone on a Fox News Channel affiliate
television station; the role of IBM in the Nazi holocaust (see IBM and
the Holocaust); the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the
privatization of Bolivia’s municipal water supply by the Bechtel
Corporation; and in general themes of corporate social responsibility,
the notion of limited liability, the corporation as a psychopath, and
the corporation as a person.
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