The Corporation Review

The movie, The Corporation provokes anger and emotion towards corporations in general. Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan did a great job showing the negative effects that Corporations have on the environment and the economy. The New York Times stated that the movie was “...thought-provoking doc... [The filmmakers] wrap their end-is-nigh warning in an entertaining package, and the coolheaded delivery increases its impact.”

During the movie, I learned about how the workers are treated in sweat shops and their wages. The footage showing the camera crew trying to enter the facility was shocking. The owners of the shop obviously didn’t want people to know the truth about how bad they are. The crew tried to host a meeting between the workers and the film crew but spies from the company came in and canceled the meeting. Before all of the workers left, some of them put pay stubs into the crew leader's hand. I was astonished about how they were only paid around 17 cents per coat they make in the shop, but the coats they made sold for hundreds of dollars.

The movie also covered another interesting issue about growth hormones. They focused on an rBGH put out by one company in particular. The movie stated that when the rGBH was created, corporations said to be completely harmless to humans and cows. But when further research was conducted by other people the tests showed that rGBH in fact made the cows suffer unnecessary pain and could cause birth defects in children. I was completely unaware to this. The only information I had ever seen before this was about how rGBH’s are good for the cows and increase the cow’s production.

The movie was long but never boring. They used video clips to make all of their interviews relate to the topic or concept in the movie. Some of the speakers in the film consisted of Michel Moore (Film Producer), Charles Kernaghan (Director, National Labor Committee), and Noam Chomsky (Institute Professor, MIT). All of these speakers thoughts came to the same conclusion “We'd better do something fast to put a net underneath this global economy, or else we're all going down." The movie itself is two hours and fifteen minutes. One of my favorite quotes in the movie is “we are like the early philosophers who jump off the cliff with wings tied to our arms and when we are falling the wind is blowing in our face, so we then draw the conclusion that we are flying but really we are just falling. The bottom is just below the clouds but we are going to hit the ground.” If you are going to see any documentary this would be the one to see. It changes the way you will look at you milk, farms and corporations.

by Griffen