Thursday, June 10, 2004

Monsters Inc.: Agent Orange, Kathie Lee sweatshops, and an eco-friendly CEO: You'll find it all in 'The Corporation'.

"Early on, the film is organized around an intriguing conceit: A speedy history introduces the legal development that helped launch the meteoric rise of the corporation; after the Civil War, lawyers began to argue that corporations were “people.” Therefore, the 14th Amendment, created to ensure the equal rights of freed slaves, was also applicable to their clients. As legally recognized “persons,” corporations thus deserved the same rights and safeguards. So, the filmmakers ask, if a corporation is a person, just what kind of person are we dealing with here?
An insane one, it turns out. Through a series of case studies on pollution, exploitative labor practices, and deceptive marketing strategies, the filmmakers make a convincing argument for putting the corporation in a straitjacket. The corporation is relentlessly selfish; its primary goal, to the exclusion of all others, is to turn a profit for its shareholders. Using up and leaving the cheap labor forces of poor countries? “An incapacity to maintain enduring relationships,” according to the psychoanalysist’s diagnostic guide, the DSM-IV. Spraying DDT all over people or lying much about antibiotics in milk? “Reckless disregard for the safety of others.”
The corporation, the film argues, suffers from a debilitating lack of empathy, an inability to accept responsibility for its actions or to feel sorrow or remorse for the consequences of what it does. The filmmakers’ verdict: According to the DSM-IV, the corporation is … a prototypical psychopath."

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