The Film and The Book
- Bakan called himself the content maker, giving credit to Achbar and Abbott for their filmmaking skills.
- Tried
to make the book less driven by dry analysis and driven more by
stories. He wanted to draw the the points he wanted to make from the
stories, which really serve as metaphor.
- Some of the stories in
the book are same as in the film, some are different. The media are
different and require different approaches.
- Ray Anderson is
major in the film, but not the book. Anderson had an epiphany in 1993;
became a “sustainable business” kind of guy. “People just fall in love
with him” on the screen. Bakan was able to say cover his story in 2 or
3 pages in the book. In the film he’s in and out because he’s
“incredibly compelling”, and works well in the “emotional medium” of
film.
- To use him in the book as often as in the film would “seem strange”.
- Wanted to make the book not just informative, but interesting and fun to read.
- Joked: wished he could’ve got a “push button book” in which you can hear Ray Anderson speak.
Psycopathology of the Corporation
- Bakan did psych as an undergrad, many psychologists in the family (both parents, an uncle).
- In Psych 101, you learn a “psychopath” (someone with antisocial personality disorder) has these qualities:
- Pathologically self-interested
- Incapable of concern for others
- No feelings of guilt or remorse
- Relationships are limited to ones in which they use other people
- No moral obligation to obey laws or social norms
- In Law School, you learn that:
- Corporations are legally required to serve their own self-interest
- Decisions had to be made to maximize the wealth of shareholders
- Corporations are persons in the eyes of the law (something drilled into to you on the first day of Business 101)
- The
corporation as a person is one that has been programmed to have a
psychopathic personality. “We created this artificial person and we’ve
required it to be self-interested.”
3 replies on “Notes from the "The Corporation" presentation, part 2”
Fro those of you who do not want to pay a big corporation to see The Corporation, TVO will be airing all three episodes of the series on May 9th. Set your VCR’s accordingly.
The series is the same as the film, only longer.
Excellent notes so far. One problem I had with the film was the psycopath montage: it went from a definition of psycopath and applied it to corporations, rather than applying the characteristics of corporations and matching them to psychological disorders as a whole.
Ray Anderson is the most compelling part of the film, though. The film would have been improved immeasurably if they cut out Noam Chomsky, who the right-wing is ignoring, and replaced it with more interviews with Anderson, who the right-wing has to pay attention to because he was once one of them.
Thanks for the notes on The Corporation, Joey. I’m looking forward to seeing it at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (“Featuring films from as far away as Canada!”) in two weeks. Not quite as cool as seeing the author give a presentation, but still before the general US release…
Later,
Luke Francl