The Corporation
Class WarfareOur Failed Media ExperimentSociopaths
I was looking for something to watch on Netflix last night. It’s getting harder and harder. I started a couple movies, but after about 10 minutes I had to bail. They were bad. Netflix bad – a new genre of bad.
In the “New Cult Films” section, they had this documentary “The Corporation.” It had 5 stars – unheard of for anything on Netflix, it won a bunch of international awards, so I started watching. Turns out “new” means 9 years old in Netflix-speak. It was about 75 hours long, but I watched the whole thing.
The film examines and criticizes corporate business practices. It compares the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave with the American Psychiatric Association’s symptoms of psychopathy right out of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
It also addresses some things you very rarely hear about in America, the “Business Plot of 1933” where General Smedley Butler exposed a plot by several large corporations against then U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to take over the government & set up a fascist state; Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning people to beware of the rising military-industrial complex; suppression of an investigative news story about Monsanto’s Bovine Growth Hormone on a Fox News Channel affiliate television station (note to self: never, EVER drink milk unless organic); the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of Bolivia’s municipal water supply (that’s right, WATER!) by the Bechtel Corporation; and other corporate devilry. [UPDATE: turns out in the last couple years, most milk producers have stopped using rBGH b/c of consumer complaints, but not all, so consult the Google before purchase.]
The film features interviews with lefties such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein (who I’ve read, but never realizedhow much she looks like Meg Griffin), Michael Moore, and a few corporate CEOs who have either turned against their masters, or are in the film as foils. And lots of other people I’ve read but never seen.
It’s worth watching during one of those times when you want to feel depressed and crappy for a while. Here’s a trailer:
