Do you think this movie is filled with inaccurate 'facts'?

Six days and no list. Yeah, that's what I thought.



Are those cloves? Outstanding!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2397200/
http://www.myspace.com/uberdose

Interesting, not a single inaccurate fact.

I remember liking the film when I saw it years ago, but I would have assumed there would be at least one. I'm no genius and I've found inaccuracies in textbooks on material way over my head that are into the double digit editions. Surely one corporate crony can find one inaccuracy in this movie.

Here's an essay I wrote which I got an A on about The Corporation and its communication of ideas and propaganda. It's a bit long.....

As opposed to propaganda by definition, which typically goes for merely a emotional response rather than play on a person’s intellect, The Corporation does well in giving the viewer both an emotional as well as a rational response to the behavior of corporations. The Corporation, though chock full of propaganda itself, often aims to dispel the corporations' propaganda techniques; such as early on in the film when they discuss the issue of a few "bad apples". This is a technique called ad nauseam/proof by assertation, or, as said best by Lenin, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth". I’d like to call The Corporation out on employing some pretty heavy ‘grey propaganda’. Typically throughout the film they don’t flat out lie or at least not purposefully, there does not seem to be any malicious attempts at self-gain. But very often they are quite biased, or paint an overly dark portrait in areas which aren’t nearly as bad as they’re attempting to prove and they do so in such a way that it is clearly not by accident.
For example, when they speak to the CEO of Goodyear he explains that layoffs are never a decision which a CEO takes lightly, before one can feel an ounce of believe in the man Noam Chomsky states that corporations are analogous to slave owners and employees slaves, if this isn’t a drastic overstatement then I don’t know what is. Although corporations are in fact the largest employers in the United States and it is difficult not to work for one at least once in one’s lifetime it is still a choice. If a person with a certain skill set decides it is more beneficial for them to work for a corporation than to work in another setting that is a choice – a choice slaves never had. Early in the film we are presented with the top 100 corporate criminals of the 1990’s. 20% are on account of antitrust violations. Antitrust violations are when corporations work to fix prices among other things and the result is bad for the economy and consumers. Although this is a very negative thing that happens it is one of the least severe violation on the list (the others mostly consisting of environmental violations and food and drug violations) but it has some of the worst penalties (a corporation must pay three times damages). In this scene a voice over reads out the crimes until very shortly one can barely make out what the narrator is saying (to give an overwhelming effect). But of the audible charges almost all of them were antitrust violations (with the biggest fines) even though the majority of corporate criminals committed environmental violations; which brings me to my next point. Almost 40% of the corporate criminals committed environmental violations, if The Corporation chose to focus on this data, instead of the antitrust violations, I think their message would have had less propaganda factor by more accurately portraying what crimes were committed. I believe they did this either because the amount of fines were higher thus making it more threatening and extreme, or because this is actually a good portrayal of the dominant belief in American society that violation capitalism is worse than violating the environment. Either way by them focusing on the antitrust violations they skewed the data. The Corporation routinely ignores the other side of the story, for example, corporations in America have the highest corporate tax in the world, thus benefiting citizens quite a bit. They also talk about DDT and its’ destroying the environment. When DDT first appeared it was used in excessive quantities because our scientists didn’t actually know how much was needed (we know now that only a very small amount is needed). Most people thought DDT was a godsend until very recently when it got notoriety from Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. Using faulty research and anecdotal evidence she alarmed the world to the horrors of DDT, she claimed that even if small quantities were used, to paraphrase, the world would come to an end, she even claimed that she knew someone who, exposed to DDT, instantly developed advanced cancer. But in fact there was no mass biocide and no mass cancer ever linked to DDT. In Africa there is a devastating epidemic of malaria (what DDT was created to treat), in fact, 1 child dies every 30 seconds due to malaria, and to combat this problem we used DDT, but now we don’t combat it at all. British politician Dick Taverne had this to say about Carson, “Carson didn't seem to take into account the vital role (DDT) played in controlling the transmission of malaria by killing the mosquitoes that carry the parasite ... It is the single most effective agent ever developed for saving human life ... Rachel Carson is a warning to us all of the dangers of neglecting the evidence-based approach and the need to weight potential risk against benefit: it can be argued that the anti-DDT campaign she inspired was responsible for almost as many deaths as some of the worst dictators of the last century”. In Uganda they are currently using DDT to save millions of lives.
A part I would have liked to see included in this film is how the power of corporations affect people in the community; exactly why small businesses (assuming this is their alternative, not government controlled communism?) may be a better alternative. Just about the only thing they didn't really discuss was the economics of it all. They could have talked about, for example, how corporations give absolutely nothing back to the community. I know it is assumed by many of the people who watch it, but to some it isn't so obvious that corporations aren't like other businesses in that they don't generate local wealth. Also I would have liked them to show us other, more ethical business models (such as co-ops, etc.) and how they are faring. On that note another thing I would have liked to see is, instead of only American and international corporations (which seemingly have no national ties), how our corporational complex compares with that of other countries. In almost every situation (such as health care, etc.) we can look to other 1st world countries and see how they're doing (what I would personally consider) better than us. What laws or social norms exist there which deal with corporations in other similar countries? In America people tend to think in very black and white terms, especially when it comes to corporations; we either have extreme laissez-faire free-market capitalism or extreme government controlled communism (American Anticommunism does a good job of portraying Americans’ emotional extremes); I would have liked to see where the middle is and how we can achieve it. But part of me wants to say that by presenting this type of data, in the opinions of the creators, the film would lose some of the fear factor it’s placing on the viewers. The last part which I felt was lacking, that I wish to discuss, was the American worker. Where we the workers’ rights issues right here in America? They touched on globalization and sweat shops, which is extremely important, but didn't really speak to Americans. It would have been great if they discussed unions a little bit more in connection to that. Instead of Noam Chomsky just saying that corporations are slave owners they could have explained how perhaps in another system the average worker would be more valued, have control over means of production, get better pay, and have a generally better community. This would have been an ideal place to sprinkle on a little "Common Man" propaganda, which the film completely lacked. Perhaps the biggest question that the film didn’t address was: What can we do as citizens to reverse this trend which seems to be spinning violently out of control?
The film uses so many quick propaganda edits that it would be very hard to catalogue them all so I’ll just name a few. Jolts are often cited as a principle — almost a first law — of media. "Jolt" refers to the moment of excitement generated by a laugh, a violent act, a car chase, a quick film cut — any fast-paced episode that lures the viewer into the program. Studies have been done that show after a “jolt” occurs the brain is unable to critically think about the information they’re receiving. Between the old-time drama music and the old-time movies and film clips the “jolts-per-minute” is pretty high for a documentary. Early on in the film it portrays corporations as Godzilla tormenting a city, then as a whale engulfing people, then as Frankenstein’s monster. Most noteworthy of all of the film had Milton Friedman…for all of 20 seconds.
One of the main ideas the film is pushing is that a corporation is defined as a person, but they didn’t go very deep into what this means. Speaking strictly in my own opinion I do not believe that a corporation should be a legal person to the extent that it is. But what if it wasn’t? If a person wanted to sue a corporation on account of, say, racial discrimination, who would they take to court? A CEO perhaps, if so which one? And if they won, how would they collect – by tracking down thousands of share holders and getting $100 from each one? It’s just not feasible. That is just one way in which corporate personhood is beneficial. Another overlooked way is that being part of a corporation one enters something called double taxation which means a corporation is taxed first and then its shareholders are taxed again. A woman in the film claims that, “…the 14th amendment was passed to protect newly freed slaves. So for instance between 1890 and 1910 there were 307 cases brought before the court … 288 were brought by corporations 19 by African Americans”. She is basically arguing that because corporations brought cases under a law it indirectly harmed the people who the law was created to help. But there is no evidence that the courts were so filled with corporate lawyers that freed slaves were unable to go to court. And anyways, the 14th amendment has done a lot of things it wasn’t intended to do. For example, it allowed married couples to purchase contraception, it gave women a constitutional right to an abortion, it allowed homosexual partners to have sexual relations, and these people are no more trivializing slavery than corporations. “600,000 people were killed to get rights for people then with strokes of the pen over the next 30 years judges applied those rights to capital and property, while stripping them from people”.
Despite its levels of propaganda I believe the film’s main points were quite good and in whole it is a very good documentary. It’s no easy task - but they managed to effectively show how corporations have permeated and have begun to rot in almost every aspect of our lives. It leaves the viewer with the distinct picture that corporations have grown out of control and now have a very large impact the news we receive, the foods we eat, the air we breathe, our accessibility to the basic needs for survival – like water, and just about every other facet of life. My final feeling after watching The Corporation was this: Who made your cameras, who made your film, your lights, what theaters did you allow this to play in, who produced it? I only know the answer to the last question: Big Picture Media Corporation produced it.