The Corporation (film)
| The Corporation | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by |
Mark Achbar Jennifer Abbott |
| Produced by | Mark Achbar Bart Simpson |
| Written by |
Joel Bakan Harold Crooks Mark Achbar |
| Narrated by | Mikela J. Mikael |
| Music by | Leonard J. Paul |
| Cinematography | Mark Achbar Rolf Cutts Jeff Hoffman Kirk Tougas |
| Edited by | Jennifer Abbott |
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Production
company |
Big Picture Media Corporation
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| Distributed by | Zeitgeist Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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145 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day corporation. Bakan wrote the book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the documentary.
The documentary shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to affect specific public functions to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person. The documentary concentrates mostly upon North American corporations, especially those in the United States. One theme is its assessment of corporations as persons, as a result of an 1886 case in the United States Supreme Court in which a statement by Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite led to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Topics addressed include the Business Plot, wherein in 1933, General Smedley Butler exposed an alleged corporate plot against then U.S. President Franklin Delano 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 at the behest of Monsanto; the invention of the soft drink Fanta by The Coca-Cola Company due to the trade embargo on Nazi Germany; the alleged role of IBM in the Nazi holocaust (see IBM and the Holocaust); the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of a municipal water supply in Bolivia; and in general themes of corporate social responsibility, the notion of limited liability, the corporation as a psychopath, and the corporate personhood debate.
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