Friday, Aug 29, 2008
Post-"Fahrenheit," the stellar documentaries -- including "The Corporation" and "Imelda" -- just keep coming. Plus: A moody meditation on familial love, or homoerotic cologne ad?
Jul 2, 2004 | Inside the dominant institution of our age: Building a better "Corporation"
Why is every important independent film of 2004 (so far) a social or political documentary? This year seems to mark some kind of golden age for what a friend of mine used to call "spinach movies." Of course there's a ripple effect from the prodigious success of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which, despite the caviling of skeptics, looks like it may be that rare work of pop culture that actually influences politics. But leave Moore out of the equation and you've still got Jehane Noujaim's "Control Room," Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me," Ramona S. Diaz's "Imelda" (reviewed below), Chris Smith and company's prankish "The Yes Men" and a forthcoming biopic of historian and lefty cult hero Howard Zinn. So something big -- yes, bigger even than Michael Moore's outsized if huggable ego -- is going on here.
Jennifer Abbott, co-director of "The Corporation," an ambitious new Canadian film that seeks to demystify the dominant institution of our age, sees a mini-rebellion in progress among information consumers.
"People are craving substance," she says. "A lot of people feel alienated from mainstream media and fiction films, Hollywood films. They're craving something deeper, something that gives them answers to some of the questions they're asking. At least, I hope that's why it's happening."
Mark Achbar, her co-director (and previously the co-director of campus cult hit "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media"), chimes in: "The longer you try to hold down this kind of critical perspective, or push it out of the mainstream -- it's like trying to squeeze Jell-O; it's going to ooze out between your fingers no matter what. The theatrical releases of these films prove that people are willing to pay money to see their values reflected in a legitimizing package."
Abbott and Achbar, along with Joel Bakan, a professor of law at the University of British Columbia (who wrote both the film script and the accompanying book just published by the Free Press), stopped by Salon's New York office this week to chat about "The Corporation." Their film is long and dense, and may lack the balls-out entertainment value of "Fahrenheit 9/11," but it's an ingenious and startling work that explores a subject few of us understand well. In an election year when the balance between corporate power and democracy seems near a tipping point, it's every bit as crucial as Moore's movie. (Now playing in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, Calif., Sacramento, Calif., and several other West Coast cities, "The Corporation" will reach much of the heartland by September.)
In a sometimes vertiginous collage of file footage, voice-over narration and interviews with critics (such as Chomsky and Moore) and corporate insiders alike, "The Corporation" tries to untangle the ideology behind a social institution that is often believed to possess no ideology at all. There's no question this is a radical and didactic work, and its premise at first may seem outlandish: The modern corporation, which has been legally endowed with many of the rights and conditions of personhood, is in fact a psychopathic personality, constitutionally incapable of doing good or caring about others. But the longer you sit and watch the movie, the more irresistible the conclusion becomes.
As "The Corporation" demonstrates, although the concept of legal personhood for corporate entities stretches back to the dawn of the Industrial Age (and in fact, says Bakan, to the Roman Empire), the dominant social role assumed by the 20th century corporation came about largely by accident. When the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed after the Civil War, it was intended to guarantee the civil rights of newly freed slaves. But sharp-eyed lawyers began to wonder whether it also guaranteed rights (such as freedom of speech and due process) to the artificial person known as the corporation.
The courts ultimately agreed, setting the stage for a day when corporations would become so powerful that they virtually dominate the society around them, controlling public philosophy and discourse to a significant degree. That day, Bakan and company argue, is today.
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