[from an interview with Paul McCulley, chief Fed watcher at the giant bond management fund PIMCO <http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Late+Breaking+Commentary/FF/2004/FF_07_04.ht m>}
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[and in movie reviews.......see the last paragraph.....How much longer will Scott be working at the NYT?]]
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/06/30/movies/30CORP.html
June 30, 2004 MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE CORPORATION'
Giving Corporations the Psychoanalytic Treatment By A. O. SCOTT
Since a corporation is legally defined as a person, it makes some sense to ask what kind of person a corporation might be. The answer offered by "The Corporation," a smart, brooding documentary directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, is: not a very nice one.
The film, which opens at Film Forum today, half-mockingly offers a psychiatric diagnosis based on a list of abuses that arise from the relentless pursuit of profit. The point is not that individual companies pollute the environment, hurt animals, exploit workers and commit accounting fraud, but that such outrages are a result of the essential personality traits of the corporate life form. These behaviors are symptoms arising from a list of pathologies that includes "disregard for the well-being of others," "inability to form lasting relationships" and "deceitfulness." A psychiatrist who has advised the F.B.I. declares that the corporation has "all the characteristics of a prototypical psychopath."
This scary diagnosis, backed up by sinister soundtrack music, is supported by talking-head testimony from activists, a few C.E.O.'s and scholars (including Noam Chomsky, the subject of Mr. Achbar's 1992 film, "Manufacturing Consent," with Peter Wintonick as co-director). "The Corporation," based on a book by the Canadian law professor Joel Bakan, is divided into cutely titled chapters ("Democracy Ltd.," "Boundary Issues") that link particular cases of capitalist misbehavior with larger issues. The structure is a bit unwieldy: some of the case studies, fascinating though they are, bog down the main argument in unassimilable details, while the argument itself sometimes threatens to float away into abstraction.
But the film's formal inelegance is a sign of its seriousness, and also of the complexity of its chosen subject. The topic, after all, is intricate and global, and Mr. Achbar and Ms. Abbott address it with spiky, dogged intelligence, if also with hectoring persistence. Corporate power is at once self-evident and elusive, mundane and esoteric, aggressive and insinuating. In the view of the filmmakers and most of their interview subjects, it is always bad and never to be trusted. The imperative to expand makes the corporation a fundamentally predatory being, gobbling up everything in its path - natural resources, populations of potential laborers and consumers, public spaces and private aspirations - without conscience or accountability.
In other words, "The Corporation" is a monster movie, and nobody, faced with so much alarming testimony, would want to defend Godzilla as he smashes buildings and tramples streetcars. But like other, less sophisticated efforts to articulate a comprehensive anticorporate ideology, this movie occasionally ensnares itself in contradictions it does not quite acknowledge.
One of the most basic of these is raised by the conceit of treating the corporation as a mental patient: is there a cure? Sometimes the film seems to suggest that there is, as when antisweatshop activists shame the Gap into changing its overseas labor practices, or when the chief executive of a carpet company becomes an advocate of sustainable manufacturing and environmental responsibility. But at other points, such reforms are viewed skeptically as instances of co-optation and public-relations spin.
One section of the film examines the historical links between various companies and mid-20th-century fascism, which are used to support a broader claim that modern consumer capitalism is, at bottom, an oppressive system of authority. "Is it narcissism that impels them to seek their reflection in the regimented structures of fascist regimes?" the voice-over narration wonders.
Well, maybe. But what is missing from "The Corporation" is any recognition that capitalism survives at least as much on seduction as on coercion, and that it has flourished not simply by means of chicanery and domination but by extending, and often fulfilling, promises of freedom, creativity and individual choice.
Mr. Chomsky grimly complains that the system makes "people into mindless consumers of things they do not want," but this analysis, while not exactly inaccurate, feels a bit incomplete. Glancing up from my laptop at the mess of sneakers, CD's, half-eaten snack foods and other useless products that surround me, I have to admit that the shoe fits. But then again, it's a comfortable shoe, it looks nice, and I got it on sale.
It may sound strange to say this about a left-wing documentary, but "The Corporation" might have benefited from a bit more Marxism. Marx, among the first to identify the malign features of capitalism, was also a persuasive analyst of its dynamism, its progressiveness and its corrosive effect on older forms of political and cultural authority. "The Corporation" is a dense, complicated and thought-provoking film, but it simplifies its title character.
THE CORPORATION
Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott; written by Joel Bakan, based on his book "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power," with narration written by Harold Crooks and Mr. Achbar; edited by Ms. Abbott; music by Leonard J. Paul; produced by Mr. Achbar and Bart Simpson; released by Zeitgeist Films. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 145 minutes. This film is not rated.