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The Corporation as 'psychopath'The film shows how a well-intentioned evil rules our lives Interestingly, the documentary itself sprang from the minds of two similarly educated white men who think they know what's best for the world -- but don't blame Rhodes scholar and University of B.C. law prof Joel Bakan, nor award-winning film-maker Mark Achbar for their white skin, their male gender or the inherently bourgeois baggage that comes with living in a privileged society such as Canada. They really did have good intentions when they set out more than five years ago to make a movie about one of the least understood, yet most prevalent, forces in the world today: The Corporation. Moreover, they brought some female energy into the equation when they pulled in Galiano Island film-maker, and Video In alum, Jennifer Abbott to edit the 400 hours of collected footage and turn it into something coherent, watchable, and ultimately compelling. Since it premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Corporation has been riding a wave of great buzz and good vibes that can make a film-maker drool. The movie was runner-up for the audience award in Toronto. Last week, it was unofficially selected for the Sundance Film Festival, and this week, it hits the big screen as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival. To understand why the movie has made such an impression on audiences in this country, and stands to make an even bigger impression abroad, you have to understand exactly what this film-making mod squad has accomplished. Through interviews, archival research and a cheeky use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the psychiatric biz's Bible), the film-makers not only explore the strange history of the corporation and its legal rights as a "person" -- a very bizarre result of the Emancipation in the United States -- but they go so far as diagnosing this man-made entity as a "psychopath." Chapter by chapter, they explore a simplified definition of antisocial personality disorder (the term 'psychopath' doesn't actually exist as an illness in the DSM) and apply it directly to their research findings. When they discover corporations are indifferent to the consequences of their actions, they check off another trait. And so it goes, until they check off every symptom of generalized antisocial psychosis -- from indifference, to manipulative behaviour, to the inability to distinguish lies from truth. It's all very clever. It's also pretty obvious, but that's what pushed Achbar and Bakan into action in the first place. "It is obvious," says Bakan. "But that's what made it so interesting. We take it all for granted, to the point where the corporation -- as an entity -- is somewhat invisible." Bakan tripped over the subject himself in the course of writing an academic book about why Constitutional rights are not altogether effective in safeguarding the individual. At about the same time, Achbar was in the process of researching a movie about globalization. Before you could say "you got my corporation in your global peanut butter," the two realized they would do better working as a team and started on the long, long road that would take them to corporate hell and back again. Abbott entered the picture through her working relationship with Achbar, the Vancouver documentary film-maker who worked with Peter Wintonick on the film version of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent and chronicled the real life love story between a transgendered man and his lesbian lover in Two Brides and a Scalpel. Abbott was working on Two Brides when Achbar and Bakan got together through a mutual friend, and before long, she too was involved in the corporate breakdown. "The hardest thing was finding a structure," says Abbott. "Using the checklist really helped set things up, but the interviews dictated the direction and the flow of the film. As far as the mood went, we didn't want people to feel despairing at the end -- and that was certainly a possibility if we'd ended on Bolivia." Abbott is referring to one of the most disturbing elements in the film, where the people of a small town in Bolivia are told they no longer have any right to collect water from rivers, streams or from the sky. As a result of a World Trade Organization deal, the villagers' water now belonged to an American corporation -- and to collect it in a pail as it fell from the sky amounted to a breach of international law. When you see it played out -- and how many people had to die in order to make a stand -- it's easy to understand why Achbar, Abbott and Bakan saw the corporation as psychopath: so many consequences of the corporate age are perfectly insane. "Here's an institution modeled after a psychopathic personality, so why have we allowed it to continue? Why have we given it so much power?" says Bakan, rhetorically. "That was the meta-narrative." Funded largely out of their own pockets after every commercial and public broadcaster turned it down at the treatment stage, the team says they never went out to make money on this movie. As self-described "activists," the purpose behind their film, and consequently Bakan's companion book which hits shelves this fall, was to be seen and heard. "Film is such a powerful tool. It makes an emotional impact... which is good if you are an activist and you want to activate people." By the same token, even the activists found themselves awash -- every so often -- in the tepid waters of personal doubt. "Not that I ever doubted the overall purpose of what we were doing, or the message of the film, but when we started talking to a lot of these people who I thought would be these typical suits... I don't know, whether it's my naivete in some way, but I got a sense of them as real human beings. I could understand their point of view, and to be quite honest, that really surprised me," says Achbar. "Here were these really powerful people -- well, one in particular -- who really wanted to make the world a better place, who really wanted to lessen the environment impact of industry and accepted his role as corporate pillager... He is trying to change things, so we couldn't really reduce things to absolutes... although to be quite frank, I was a little worried when I found an appreciation for the humanity in upper levels of corporate management -- that somewhere in my heart, I had a lot of time for the CEO of a transnational corporation." The Corporation's comfort in the grey zone is part of what makes it such a great movie, as it refuses simplistic solutions for something we've collectively willed into existence. A recent Ipsos-Reid survey actually found that the majority (65 per cent) of British Columbians actually gave B.C. corporations good marks for acting in a socially responsible manner. By the same token, most people surveyed also said they were pessimistic about their ability to influence corporate citizenship. "I think we'd all like to believe people are acting in our best interests. It certainly feels much better than the alternative... and when you realize these are just people and you see them playing out this role that's been ascribed to them, you can separate the person from the role. It also lets you see how the person can be warped by the role, to the extent they -- through their corporate extension of self -- manifest psychopathic behaviours," says Achbar. "As a film-maker, my main interest has always been -- and always will be people. I'm not a Rhodes scholar like Joel. I'm not an academic. To me, this movie is really about people and understanding the world we've created... personally, I don't know how I feel about the future after completing this film... But given everything we learned through the process, I guess I feel an optimism of spirit -- but pessimism of the intellect." The Corporation plays the Vancouver International Film Festival Monday 2 p.m. Granville 7; Wed. Oct. 8, 6:30 p.m. Granville 7; and Friday, Oct. 10, 1 p.m. Granville 5. Vancouver International Film Festival © Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun |
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UBC Faculty of Law |