Dutch lady
Review
Joseph G. Ramsey
The Corporation. Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot.
The Edges of "Externality" 1. Following Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me!, the two docudrama hits of last season, comes The Corporation, bearing accolades from not only the Sundance Film Festival, but Premiere magazine, the LA, and New York Times. Directed by Mark Achbar (previous co-director ofManufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) and Jennifer Abbot, and based on the book by Joel Bakan -- The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power and Profit -- this radical Canadian documentary features Left-notables such as Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Naomi Klein, as well as thirty-odd lesser-known corporate experts: "CEOs, whistle blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns, and pundits," as the film's promotional blurb proudly declares. As both a critical analysis and a dramatic indictment of the "dominant institution of our era," The Corporation probes far deeper than Michael Moore's and Morgan Spurlock's work. The film merits serious attention and deserves a truly super-sized audience (one that, unfortunately, it seems unlikely to get in the US). 2. Beginning with a fast-paced overview of the recent explosion of corporate crime scandals, the movie proceeds to satirize the dominant media's diagnosis of this scandal "crisis" as the product of a few -- OK, a few dozen -- "bad apples" stinking up otherwise healthy Corporate America. The film breaks down this "bad apple" metaphor, demonstrating again and again how the "rotting" of corporate "apples" is little but the open flowering of the corruption present in these institutions' very corporate seeds. 3. In its early sequences, The Corporation examines how corporations acquired the status of legal "persons" following the US Civil War, ironically via the Constitutional amendments aimed at guaranteeing equal citizenship to newly freed African Americans. Wittily, the film
Joseph G. Ramsey
The Corporation. Directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot.
The Edges of "Externality" 1. Following Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me!, the two docudrama hits of last season, comes The Corporation, bearing accolades from not only the Sundance Film Festival, but Premiere magazine, the LA, and New York Times. Directed by Mark Achbar (previous co-director ofManufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) and Jennifer Abbot, and based on the book by Joel Bakan -- The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power and Profit -- this radical Canadian documentary features Left-notables such as Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Naomi Klein, as well as thirty-odd lesser-known corporate experts: "CEOs, whistle blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns, and pundits," as the film's promotional blurb proudly declares. As both a critical analysis and a dramatic indictment of the "dominant institution of our era," The Corporation probes far deeper than Michael Moore's and Morgan Spurlock's work. The film merits serious attention and deserves a truly super-sized audience (one that, unfortunately, it seems unlikely to get in the US). 2. Beginning with a fast-paced overview of the recent explosion of corporate crime scandals, the movie proceeds to satirize the dominant media's diagnosis of this scandal "crisis" as the product of a few -- OK, a few dozen -- "bad apples" stinking up otherwise healthy Corporate America. The film breaks down this "bad apple" metaphor, demonstrating again and again how the "rotting" of corporate "apples" is little but the open flowering of the corruption present in these institutions' very corporate seeds. 3. In its early sequences, The Corporation examines how corporations acquired the status of legal "persons" following the US Civil War, ironically via the Constitutional amendments aimed at guaranteeing equal citizenship to newly freed African Americans. Wittily, the film