Notes from the "The Corporation" presentation, part 1

Here’s the first of my notes from last night’s session with Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation. More later today.

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Innis TownHall Theatre was packed solid, even with the extra

folding chairs that had been set up. It was decided to open the

balconies which ran the length of the sides of the theatre. Eldon and I

took seats on the atrium steps to the near the front of the theatre,

just to the right of the seats.

They first showed the trailer for the movie, followed by clips. Among the clips were:

• The

  “Bad Apples” Sequence: A rapid-fire series of jump-cuts from news

  programs in which various interviewees kept saying that the scandals of

  2002 (Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Andersen, et. cie.) were either “just a

  few bad apples” or “not just a few bad apples”.

• Michael Moore,

  talking about the cognitive dissonance between the products we make and

  the effects they have, citing his family’s history of working on th

  elines at General Motors.

• Ray Anderson, president of Interface,

  talking about the epiphany he had. His discovery that his business —

  carpet tiles — was not an asset to the planet and not sustainable.

  This discovery, in his own words, was “a spear through his heart”.

• Noam

  Chomsky

  , complete with the finger-wagging that is his stock in trade,

  talking about the difference between the individuals in corpoations —

  very nice people — and the corporations as entities — not very nice.

• Commodities trader Carlton Brown, who said that he could guarantee that the first thought

  running through the mind of every trader who wasn’t in the World Trade

  Center on 9/11 was “How much is gold up?”

• Lucy Hughes, Director of Research for AdLink (VP of Initiative Media during filming) and co-conceiver of a concept called The Nag Factor,

  talking about how her book and her studies were not about helping

  parents cope with nagging, it’s to help us help kids nag more

  effectively in order to sell more children’s products. “Is it ethical?”

  she asks, with a grin. “I don’t know.”

Origin story

• 1997 – Bakan had just published a book about Canadian Charter of Rights.
• He

  came to the conclusion that the reasons why the Canadian Constitution

  had little or no impact on social justice was that the rights specified

  within dealt with the behaviour of the goverment towards people.

  Corporations have more power over people these days.

• With economic globalization, corporations do more than making products. They dictate political, economic and social conditions.
• We need to look at and think about corporations in the same way we do with governments.
• The Corporation was originally conceived as an academic book
• The problem with academic books: largely inaccessible, read mostly by other academics.
• Met

  Mark Ackbar (co-directed “Manufacturing Consent”), who said “Why don’t

  I make a film about the book?” “The book doesn’t exist.” from this came

  the idea to write the book and make the film simultaneously.

The pitch

• 3.5 years to get funding for the film
• Lots of pitches, many unsuccessful
• Fortunately

  as a lawyer, he is trained in the art of persuading people of certain

  things (“often you have to do this for thing you tyourself don’t

  believe.”)

• Pitching to TV people is similar to making a case in court
• You

  can’t just walk to Sony or Miramax and say you want to make a film that

  says their institution is psycopathic. He talked to public companies.

• Turned down by CBC
• Bakan

  has two theories as to why they were turned down: the film idea was (a)

  too edgy (b) not edgy enough. He thinks that both were true.

• Kept falling between the two poles of too/not controversial enough
• VisionTV first sponsor; TVOntario also funded the film.
• Raised $1.4M to shoot the film
• The

  film couldn’t have been made in the US where public broadcasting is

  heavily funded by corporations. Testament to the value of public

  broadcasting and the public sphere.

• Trying not to focus on the “bad execs”, and not just “bad corporations”, but a larger topic: the corporation as a generic entity

The “Bad Apple” Jump-Cuts in the Film

• Mark

  Ackbar got a sattelite dish and taped news channels in the wake of the

  Enron/Worldcom scandals for source material for this sequence.

• 80% of the pundits said it was “just a few bad apples”, 20% said the opposite.