'THE CORPORATION' Film takes aim at big business

The documentary doesn't offer a lot of new insight, but it is worth watching.
By PHIL VILLARREAL
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
American law defines corporations as people, with the rights to sue and be sued, and more importantly, deflect liability from corporation owners.
"The Corporation," a stinging if redundant and overlong documentary from directors Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar, takes the corporation-as-person idea and moves a step further -- it plops the concept of corporation into the psychoanalyst's chair for an evaluation.
Cheerfully running down the list of antisocial personality traits, including reckless disregard for others and incapacity to express guilt, the filmmakers conclude that the corporation is a psychopath. An unconscionable moneymaking mechanism in the same way a shark is a morality-free eating machine, the corporation is an evil, single-minded entity that will lie, cheat and maraud to feed its never-ending hunger.
Big business has usurped authority from governments, trashed the environment and pumped carcinogens into its customers, whom it has tricked into loyalty with hidden messages when they were children.
Out to get you
In an urgent, subversively detached voice that seems straight out of those "the African children are starving" commercials, narrator Mikela Mikael sifts through the truckloads of evidence collected by Abbott and Achbar, proving over, over, over and over again that corporations are out to get you, and that you need to be afraid. You need to lock your back door at night and keep a gun under your pillow.
Almost comical in its over-the-top, hateful proselytizing, "The Corporation" could have been more effective had it taken the Michael Moore route of easing up on the ranting and sprinkling in some buckling humor.
Clearly influenced by the big- business-damning spirit of Moore's "The Big One" (1997), "The Corporation" hammers at its targets with reams of archive footage and interviews, including words from former CEOs and Moore himself.
The filmmakers trap several business heads, including those at Nike and Disney, in their own hypocrisy and catalog multimillion-dollar cash settlements that businesses have repeatedly paid out when found guilty of crimes. Without a mind to rehabilitate or a body to lock up, fines seem to be the only way to punish a corporation. And cash settlements hardly do damage to companies with billions in assets.
Revelations
Though many of the accusations are old news for anyone who pays attention to the news, the film does pack a few alarming revelations: that IBM provided computer punch cards that helped the Third Reich organize the concentration camps (an IBM representative denies that the company had any knowledge of the equipment use), and that Coca-Cola concocted Fanta Orange to continue to sell beverages in Nazi Germany.
Far too much time is spent on Fox News deciding to kowtow to advertisers to bury a story about dangerous milk. It almost seems as though Abbott and Achbar are doing a favor for bitter friends who lost their jobs and court cases to Fox.
A trimmer, zippier cut of "The Corporation" might have been quite the fast-paced rabble-rousing ride, but this lengthy, stodgy version of the film is still worth a look. It makes you wonder, when you sit down at McDonald's, whether you are eating that Big Mac or the Big Mac is eating you.