All alone confronting Goliath

All alone confronting Goliath

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

For a film that was aimed as a searing indictment of big
business, The Corporation is a major success -- so successful
that it has been adopted by the business establishment as a
marker in their soul-searching campaign.

A box office documentary film in the same league as Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It grossed over US$6 million worldwide
and won 24 awards including one at the 2004 Sundance Film
Festival, copies of The Corporation are now held in libraries in
hundreds of business schools in North America and have been
screened in master of business administration (MBA) classes
attended by future CEOs.

The film, released in 2003, has also been broadcast on dozens
of television stations across the globe.

The success of The Corporation has in a way changed the life
of its maker, Canadian film director Mark Achbar.

Although he never came close to becoming a corporate person
himself, Achbar has adopted some of the methods often used by
traveling businesspeople.

After a long conversation with The Jakarta Post at the
Canadian Embassy, the energetic director handed out a name card
bearing the logo of his film -- a yellow silhouette of a man in
a suit with an angelic halo above his head and a devil's tail
behind his back -- giving a slight impression that the film has
been turned into a corporate entity.

Beneath his brown jacket, Achbar wore a black T-shirt adorned
with the same imprint.

The way Achbar dresses today is a radical departure from his
former sartorial preferences.

Achbar was in the city early last week to promote The
Corporation to audiences at the Jakarta International Film
Festival (JiFFest).

Forensic examination of big business

The Corporation as a film is also a walking contradiction, for
the box-office certification, business travel and changing
sartorial style however are a product of dissecting and attacking
the monstrous institution of the modern era that is the
corporation.

The film explores the nature and spectacular rise of big
business -- including the McDonald's fast-food chain, GAP
clothing company, Coca Cola, Goodyear tire company and even Fox
News Channel.

The film interviews 40 individuals, from leftist pundit Noam
Chomsky, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, liberal
filmmaker Michael Moore, author and political activist Naomi
Klein to chairman of Royal Dutch Shell Sir Mark Moody-Stuart and
former chief executive officer and chairman of Goodyear Tire, Sam
Gibara.

Held to be responsible for countless cases of illness, death,
poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies, corporations are
portrayed in the film as being psychopathic -- entities that are
self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful.

Corporations breach social and legal standards to get their
way; they do not suffer from guilt, yet can mimic the human
qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.

All fit the definition "psychopath" provided by the World
Health Organization (WHO).

Despite its weighty subject the film was destined to be a
success, by dint of its groundbreaking technique and meticulous
research.

Based on a written project of the same title by law professor
Joel Bakan, material from the film later made up a great deal of
chapters in a new book.

Interviews from the films would be quoted in the book, whilst
a great deal of writing from the book became narration for the
film.

Both the book and the film were completed at the same time
after six years of preparation.

In the latter stages of production, along came Jennifer Abbot,
who lent a hand with the film's editing.

For Achbar, the film was the ultimate product of what he
experienced as corporate "claustrophobia".

"Every aspect of our lives is being impinged upon or affected
in some way by this corporate thing, whether it be the food we
eat, the clothes we wear, the car we drive or the places we go
to. At a certain point it all became a little claustrophobic and
I needed to do something about it," said Achbar, who wishes to be
identified as a radical leftist.

Everything's up for grabs

The film was also the culmination of his derision for big
business, whose desire for profit has reached an alarming rate.

Parts of the film show that today, every molecule on the
planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are
patenting animals, plants, even deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
codes.

Another example of such corporate greed is that even the
rights to the song Happy Birthday are now held by a company owned
by media giant AOL-Time-Warner.

The Corporation was just a stopover by Achbar during his
project to make provocative films.

In his 30-year independent filmmaking career, Achbar has
produced some of the most incendiary documentary films in Canada,
including The Canadian Conspiracy, a cultural/political satire
for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation screened on HBO's
Comedy Experiments, and Two Brides and A Scalpel: Diary of a
Lesbian Marriage, a comi-tragic tale of Canada's first same-sex
marriage.

Achbar hit pay dirt, however, when he produced Manufacturing
Consent: Noam Chomsky and The Media, a documentary film that
delves into the political life and ideas of Chomsky.

In the film, Achbar argues that corporate media, as profit-
driven institutions, tend to serve and further the agendas of the
interests of dominant, elite groups in society. The film's
centerpiece was reluctance by The New York Times to cover
Indonesia's occupation of East Timor in the mid-1970s.

Consent also served as Achbar's homage to Chomsky, whom he
said had greatly influenced his political thinking.

Attending college in Syracuse, New York, and diligently
protesting against Reagan's nuclear programs in the early 1980s,
Achbar ingested Chomsky's view to galvanize his political stance.

"He literally changed the way I think about the world and
power. He challenged everything that I regarded as the norm; I
heard little from him that is incorrect," the 50-year old said.

His political views were also shaped by the newspaper that
Chomsky has berated so often, The New York Times.

"Reading the Times on a daily basis is enough to change your
political perspective," he said.

On the net:
www.thecorporation.com
www.madman.com