3. The Corporation
In the 19th century the corporation was legally defined as a "person," with exactly the same rights, but none of the responsibilities of real, flesh-and-blood people. This powerful film seeks to assess the "personality" of the corporation by using the diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organisation. Through rigorously assembled case studies and exhaustive analysis the film comes to the conclusion that the corporation is a psychopath: evil by design rather than by accident. If you want to understand the roots of the banking crisis you will find them here. With everything reduced to the acquisition of the next buck it means that IBM creates the first ever barcode so that the Nazis can track inmates in their concentration camps. It means that Caterpillar constructs and supplies specially armoured bulldozers for the Israeli Defence Forces, the better to destroy homes in Palestine. It means that Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists are hanged for opposing Shell's environmentally unfriendly practices in the Niger Delta. It means that the Foxconn factory where my MacBook Pro is manufactured has anti suicide-nets to prevent the slave labour workers throwing themselves to their deaths. It means that 9/11 as the towers burned and then collapsed the commodity traders were asking, "Well, how much is gold up?" " Naomi Klein, Michael Moore and the late Anita Roddick, amongst many others, all give their chastening insights into the inner workings of an entity which is the corner stone of civilised Western society. Provocative, enlightening and genuinely scary The Corporation will make you think twice before you buy your next iPhone. Or not. Modern life is rubbish without conspicuous fashionable consumption.