Interview with "The Corporation" filmmaker

A new film from the co-director of Manufacturing Consent-Noam Chomsky and the Media. "The Next Bowling for Columbine" "Provocative, Entertaining, and at times Chilling" A Heartland Labor Forum (KKFI 90.1 FM Kansas City) interview with filmaker Mark Achbar <!--break--> <img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/HOMETO~1.jpg"><br>On November 4,2004, an interview I recorded with Mark Achbar, producer and co-director of the film "The Corporation", aired on the Heartland Labor Forum on KKFI 90.1 FM in Kansas City. Here is a transcript of the interview. HLF: I’m looking at a poster right now for a documentary called “The Corporation.” I see a silhouette of man in a suit carrying a briefcase with a devil’s tail and an angel’s halo. What’s the corporation all about? Achbar: Well, I think that logo, or brand, if you will, sums up the paradox that the modern business corporation is in our society, and that’s what we explore in the course of a little more than two and a half hours in a feature documentary. We do our best to make it engaging, and at times quite entertaining. Michael Moore is in there and he’s always good for a laugh. Other figures might me familiar to your listeners: Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn, perhaps even Elaine Bernard, who runs the labor program at Harvard University. We try to explore the nature of the modern business corporation- how it came to be, the way it is today… It wasn’t always so, its a relatively… relatively new institution, really, only about a hundred fifty years old in it’s present form with a lot of it’s present characteristics. And we ask the question, sort of, ‘where are we on the timeline of the modern business corporation, where are we on the timeline of this dominant institution?’ Because other institutions that have dominated societies in the past, the church, and the monarchy, the Communist Party, even, in other times and places, have lost their position of dominance, and have been transformed, or have even been crushed… and it’s unlikely, we postulate, that the corporation is going to defy history, and the question the viewer is left with is, you know, ‘where are we on this timeline, and how close are we to a change in the way things are?’ HLF: I see one of the quotes from the media is “Surprisingly Rational”- HLF and Achbar: -‘According to the Economist’. HLF: I guess we consider the source there, but considering that, that’s kind of high praise… Achbar: That is pretty high praise, and we… and you know we worked hard not to demonize the leaders of big corporations, and to talk to them as people, as human beings who are part of an institution that is in some ways larger than all of us, and our analysis really focuses on the institution and how it got to be that way. It’s actually Noam Chomsky at one point in the film who says we have to distinguish between the institution and the individuals who run them. He draws the parallel to slavery. People you see in the film are… you know, they’re pretty nice guys. And you wouldn’t be too quick to put a devil’s tail, to pin that devil’s tail on them, just the way they present themselves and their values. So we have to try to look beyond demonizing those characters, and hope, at least to some degree, that they want the best for their grandchildren in terms of a survivable planet, that they don’t want to feel responsible for labor abuses and some of the environmental harms that come as a result of their activities, that they’re trying to.. that they’re doing their best to minimize those – but, the institution itself compels it’s managers to operate in the best interest of it’s shareholders. And that’s the strange thing about the publicly traded corporation. Its compelled by law to operate in the best interests of it’s shareholders and the courts have interpreted that as the best financial interests of it’s shareholders. We’re just trying to look at the forces at work. And I’m not trying to absolve some of the worst practices by corporate leaders in any way, I think they have to be held accountable, but at the same time I think we have to look at the institutional forces at work that are rewarding certain behaviors and not punishing others. HLF: Yeah, that’s an interesting point you raised about how Noam Chomsky said you need to separate the system from the individuals and with Enron and some of these other corporate scandals we would hope that the CEO’s would be of high moral fiber but there seems to be a systemic problem and I’m looking again at the poster and I see “Special Guest Star: The FBI’s Top Consultant On Psychopaths”… and some of us are familiar with the issue of ‘corporate personhood’, I wonder if you could tie that all together in the short time we’ve got here. Achbar: Well, just briefly…. And I will add, you know, some of the tape recordings we’ve all heard of the inside players from Enron, were just abhorrent, and such callous behavior towards shareholders and towards stakeholders, you know, they really deserve to be in jail. But, that said, what we looked at … the fact that the corporation under law is deemed to be a person, and that happened in the Santa Clara decision in the late 1800’s. HLF: The railroad case… Achbar: That’s right Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific Railway. And it wasn’t a clear decision, it was in the ‘head notes’ what they call… Thom Hartmann has perhaps talked to you and your listeners HLF: Yeah, we’ve had Thom Hartmann on the show, and uh… I had heard for years about this case and that that bestowed personhood on corporations, and then he tells me it really doesn’t, even thought it’s cited as precedent in a lot of cases… Achbar: Technically it didn’t, but it was subsequently used as a precedent and Joel Bakan, the writer of the book on which “The Corporation”, the film, is based… he’s a law professor, and he tells me that even though that wasn’t a particularly clear decision, the fact that it was used as precedent and accepted as a premise for so many cases subsequently, that even if you un-did that case its pretty well rooted in law, and its also rooted internationally. Anyway, we took this premise of the corporation being a person and asked, well, if the corporation is a person, what kind of person is it? And we went through a number of case studies to illustrate the kind of character, if the corporation was a person, that this institution possesses. And we went so far as to get the world’s top expert on diagnosing psychopaths. He’s a professor at the University of British Columbia, and he’s a consultant to the F.B.I. on some of their profiling cases, and he went through the diagnostic criteria for a psychopath and applied to the way that big corporation behave in our world today. And you go through these characteristics one by one and, weirdly enough, it’s a perfect fit no matter which criteria you use. We went through the standard diagnostic criteria that psychologists and psychiatrists use and we even went to the World Health Organization criteria and we kind of blended those for a hybrid list and when you look at the kind of callous unconcern for the feeling of others, when you look at the sort of pathological self-interested nature of the institution, when you look at its disregard for the law and for other social norms, its sort of ability to form relationships but not very good at maintaining them over time- a factory will just as soon move to Mexico or move its operations elsewhere- there’s just no true loyalty there. You know, its kind of glib, its superficial in its relations, it will use people, it will manipulate people. And we ask the question, why have we created the dominant institution of our time in the image of a psychopath, and what are the consequences for society, and for the earth, and for workers if we do grant such immense power and we continue to hand over so many institutional functions of our society to this essentially self-interested entity. Is that a smart thing for us to be doing? It has claimed under the constitution, at least in the United States, many rights. Some would argue that corporations today have more rights than we humans. But the greater problem, I think, is its ability to amass so much wealth and concentrate it, that’s the kind of power that I think is antithetical to a real democracy. HLF: Mark Achbar, we are rapidly running out of time, but I’d like to point out to our listeners that this was the winner of the audience award at Sundance Film Festival, winner of six international audience choice awards. The film is “The Corporation” by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan. Thank you very much for talking to us today. Achbar: Well, its been a pleasure. We’re now up to nine audience awards, and we do encourage people to have a look at the website, www.thecorporation.com, for more information about the film. http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequalprotection.shtml www.poclad.org www.kkfi.org www.kcindymedia.org

<p>A new film from the co-director of Manufacturing Consent-Noam Chomsky and the Media. "The Next Bowling for Columbine" "Provocative, Entertaining, and at times Chilling" A Heartland Labor Forum (KKFI 90.1 FM Kansas City) interview with filmaker Mark Achbar</p> <!--break--><p><img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/HOMETO~1.jpg" /><br />On November 4,2004, an interview I recorded with Mark Achbar, producer and co-director of the film "The Corporation", aired on the Heartland Labor Forum on KKFI 90.1 FM in Kansas City. Here is a transcript of the interview.</p> <p>HLF: I’m looking at a poster right now for a documentary called “The Corporation.” I see a silhouette of man in a suit carrying a briefcase with a devil’s tail and an angel’s halo. What’s the corporation all about? </p> <p>Achbar: Well, I think that logo, or brand, if you will, sums up the paradox that the modern business corporation is in our society, and that’s what we explore in the course of a little more than two and a half hours in a feature documentary. We do our best to make it engaging, and at times quite entertaining. Michael Moore is in there and he’s always good for a laugh. Other figures might me familiar to your listeners: Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn, perhaps even Elaine Bernard, who runs the labor program at Harvard University. We try to explore the nature of the modern business corporation- how it came to be, the way it is today… It wasn’t always so, its a relatively… relatively new institution, really, only about a hundred fifty years old in it’s present form with a lot of it’s present characteristics. And we ask the question, sort of, ‘where are we on the timeline of the modern business corporation, where are we on the timeline of this dominant institution?’ Because other institutions that have dominated societies in the past, the church, and the monarchy, the Communist Party, even, in other times and places, have lost their position of dominance, and have been transformed, or have even been crushed… and it’s unlikely, we postulate, that the corporation is going to defy history, and the question the viewer is left with is, you know, ‘where are we on this timeline, and how close are we to a change in the way things are?’</p> <p>HLF: I see one of the quotes from the media is “Surprisingly Rational”-<br /> HLF and Achbar: -‘According to the Economist’.<br /> HLF: I guess we consider the source there, but considering that, that’s kind of high praise…</p> <p>Achbar: That is pretty high praise, and we… and you know we worked hard not to demonize the leaders of big corporations, and to talk to them as people, as human beings who are part of an institution that is in some ways larger than all of us, and our analysis really focuses on the institution and how it got to be that way. It’s actually Noam Chomsky at one point in the film who says we have to distinguish between the institution and the individuals who run them. He draws the parallel to slavery. People you see in the film are… you know, they’re pretty nice guys. And you wouldn’t be too quick to put a devil’s tail, to pin that devil’s tail on them, just the way they present themselves and their values. So we have to try to look beyond demonizing those characters, and hope, at least to some degree, that they want the best for their grandchildren in terms of a survivable planet, that they don’t want to feel responsible for labor abuses and some of the environmental harms that come as a result of their activities, that they’re trying to.. that they’re doing their best to minimize those – but, the institution itself compels it’s managers to operate in the best interest of it’s shareholders. And that’s the strange thing about the publicly traded corporation. Its compelled by law to operate in the best interests of it’s shareholders and the courts have interpreted that as the best financial interests of it’s shareholders. We’re just trying to look at the forces at work. And I’m not trying to absolve some of the worst practices by corporate leaders in any way, I think they have to be held accountable, but at the same time I think we have to look at the institutional forces at work that are rewarding certain behaviors and not punishing others.</p> <p>HLF: Yeah, that’s an interesting point you raised about how Noam Chomsky said you need to separate the system from the individuals and with Enron and some of these other corporate scandals we would hope that the CEO’s would be of high moral fiber but there seems to be a systemic problem and I’m looking again at the poster and I see “Special Guest Star: The FBI’s Top Consultant On Psychopaths”… and some of us are familiar with the issue of ‘corporate personhood’, I wonder if you could tie that all together in the short time we’ve got here.</p> <p>Achbar: Well, just briefly…. And I will add, you know, some of the tape recordings we’ve all heard of the inside players from Enron, were just abhorrent, and such callous behavior towards shareholders and towards stakeholders, you know, they really deserve to be in jail. </p> <p>But, that said, what we looked at … the fact that the corporation under law is deemed to be a person, and that happened in the Santa Clara decision in the late 1800’s. </p> <p>HLF: The railroad case…</p> <p>Achbar: That’s right Santa Clara vs. Southern Pacific Railway. And it wasn’t a clear decision, it was in the ‘head notes’ what they call… Thom Hartmann has perhaps talked to you and your listeners</p> <p>HLF: Yeah, we’ve had Thom Hartmann on the show, and uh… I had heard for years about this case and that that bestowed personhood on corporations, and then he tells me it really doesn’t, even thought it’s cited as precedent in a lot of cases…</p> <p>Achbar: Technically it didn’t, but it was subsequently used as a precedent and Joel Bakan, the writer of the book on which “The Corporation”, the film, is based… he’s a law professor, and he tells me that even though that wasn’t a particularly clear decision, the fact that it was used as precedent and accepted as a premise for so many cases subsequently, that even if you un-did that case its pretty well rooted in law, and its also rooted internationally.</p> <p>Anyway, we took this premise of the corporation being a person and asked, well, if the corporation is a person, what kind of person is it? And we went through a number of case studies to illustrate the kind of character, if the corporation was a person, that this institution possesses. And we went so far as to get the world’s top expert on diagnosing psychopaths. He’s a professor at the University of British Columbia, and he’s a consultant to the F.B.I. on some of their profiling cases, and he went through the diagnostic criteria for a psychopath and applied to the way that big corporation behave in our world today. And you go through these characteristics one by one and, weirdly enough, it’s a perfect fit no matter which criteria you use. We went through the standard diagnostic criteria that psychologists and psychiatrists use and we even went to the World Health Organization criteria and we kind of blended those for a hybrid list and when you look at the kind of callous unconcern for the feeling of others, when you look at the sort of pathological self-interested nature of the institution, when you look at its disregard for the law and for other social norms, its sort of ability to form relationships but not very good at maintaining them over time- a factory will just as soon move to Mexico or move its operations elsewhere- there’s just no true loyalty there. You know, its kind of glib, its superficial in its relations, it will use people, it will manipulate people. And we ask the question, why have we created the dominant institution of our time in the image of a psychopath, and what are the consequences for society, and for the earth, and for workers if we do grant such immense power and we continue to hand over so many institutional functions of our society to this essentially self-interested entity. Is that a smart thing for us to be doing? It has claimed under the constitution, at least in the United States, many rights. Some would argue that corporations today have more rights than we humans. But the greater problem, I think, is its ability to amass so much wealth and concentrate it, that’s the kind of power that I think is antithetical to a real democracy.</p> <p>HLF: Mark Achbar, we are rapidly running out of time, but I’d like to point out to our listeners that this was the winner of the audience award at Sundance Film Festival, winner of six international audience choice awards. The film is “The Corporation” by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan. Thank you very much for talking to us today.</p> <p>Achbar: Well, its been a pleasure. We’re now up to nine audience awards, and we do encourage people to have a look at the website, <a href="http://www.thecorporation.com">www.thecorporation.com</a>, for more information about the film.</p> <p><a href="http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequalprotection.shtml">http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequalprotection.shtml</a><br /> <a href="http://www.poclad.org">www.poclad.org</a><br /> <a href="http://www.kkfi.org">www.kkfi.org</a><br /> <a href="http://www.kcindymedia.org">www.kcindymedia.org</a></p>

Interview with "The Corporation" filmmaker http://rochester.indymedia.org/node/2218

Interview with "The Corporation" filmmaker http://rochester.indymedia.org/node/2218