The Orange County Register
Saturday, August 28, 2004

Esprit de corp.

Local MBA students who watched film attacking U.S. corporations aren’t offended but see lessons as well.


By JAMES B. KELLEHER


The new film “The Corporation” takes a harshly critical look at what its creators argue is the dominant institution of our time: the for-profit, multinational corporation.

To call the film provocative is an understatement. Like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Corporation” is a broadside, not a balanced inquiry—a 2 1/2-hour collection of case studies, resurrected corporate training films, and on-camera interviews with Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore (and, to be fair, Milton Friedman and Peter Drucker, as well), that paints a corrosive portrait of big business.

So we thought we’d be provocative, too, and invite some Register readers to a private screening of the film, which is scheduled to open Sept. 3 in Irvine at the Town Center University 6 theaters.

We figured our audience members, who all described themselves as fans of big companies, would be rendered apoplectic by the film, which is directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar, the man behind “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media,” a 1992 film that painted a corrosive portrait of newspapers and the media.

After all, “The Corporation” calls big business a lot of nasty names, including, “beast,” “psychopath” and “doom machine”—and that’s just in the first hour.

Fighting words to the ears of MBA students, right?

Wrong.

When Cindy Cheng, a 26-year-old MBA student at the Graduate School of Management at UC Irvine, Patty Sims, a 46-year-old MBA student at Concordia University, Jorge Ramiro, 47-year-old MBA student at the University of Phoenix, and Justin Weiler, a 24-year-old Cal State Fullerton grad mulling an MBA, finished watching ”The Corporation,” they each gave the film two thumbs up.

“It’s very well done,” Cheng said. ”They’ve gathered a lot of perspectives and points of view. ... It’s a reality check.”

Nothing they heard in the film—not even the suggestion that corporations brainwash American babies, sanction murder in Nigeria, or have a narcissistic need to support fascist dictators—prompted any of our screeners to drop their MBA plans and start chanting anti- WTO slogans. They seemed to believe that social responsibility and a clear conscience were compatible with life in the board room.

Had we seen the same film?


Here are excerpts from the discussion.

Q. I guess we should deal with the key question right off the bat: Was this a documentary about corporations or a diatribe against them?

Weiler: It was fair and balanced.

Q. Are you serious?

Weiler: I think it presented the questions that people should ask themselves about corporations, questions people who run corporations don’t want you to ask. I think it was coming from the left, sure, but in a moderate way.

Cheng: Overall, I thought the filmmakers had a pretty balanced perspective. I thought they interviewed a wide array of people. Everything—even a news piece—has an element of point of view. But it highlights stuff about corporations that people may not be aware of.

Ramiro: I agree. There was a strong message here. But the film also had (the voices of) executives.

Sims: I think it was definitely a documentary with both sides.

Q. Really? I can’t think of very many points in this film where corporations were painted in a positive light. But I can think of many instances where the filmmakers demonized business outright.

Cheng: I think the filmmakers make a distinction between the cold entity of the corporation and the people who run them, who they portrayed as real people, individuals who can make a difference.

Q. One of the central assumptions of the film is that the corporation has become this unelected, undemocratic force, free of the checks and balances we associate with our government.

Ramiro: I think it’s fair. Corporations have a lot of power. And what they do affects more than just their stockholders.

Q. The filmmakers interviewed about 40 people—from Jeremy Rifkin and Howard Zinn to Milton Friedman and Peter Drucker. The thoughts of anyone of those people stand out in your mind?

Sims: Definitely the carpet executive (Ray Anderson, the environmentally minded head of a carpet company that has been moving away from petrochemical-based products). I grew up in New Jersey, where the rivers foamed and dumps exploded because of toxic chemicals combining. He hit home.

Cheng: I was really struck by the commodities trader (Carlton Brown) describing how his colleagues cheered as gold prices went up after September 11. As dark as that anecdote was, it illuminated the heart of the corporation. There isn’t a heart. Profits, the bottom line, are all that matter.

Q. OK, so who’s dropping out of business school tomorrow and enrolling in a seminary?

Ramiro: It doesn’t change my mind about wanting to work for a corporation. Capitalism is the name of the game. The film’s just made me more mindful of what companies do to the environment and ... (what) we can, as individuals, do to be more responsible.

Sims: I’m attracted to business because I think I can make a difference and not be cold-hearted. Businesses and corporations are only as good as the people who run them are. Getting an MBA will allow me to become one of those movers and shakers and actually put a heart and a conscience back into corporate America. It’s given me more incentive to go.

Cheng: I agree with Patty. I’m going to school to become part of the process, to be able to exert my influence and beliefs on the institution. Corporations aren’t machines. They’re run by people. Over time, they’re pushed by competitors, by customers to be more and more profit-driven and insensitive.

Weiler: I agree. It’s not News Corp. that’s bad. It’s Murdoch that’s bad. It’s not Walt Disney that’s bad. It’s (Michael) Eisner that’s bad. And government can control and put clamps on these corporations if they feel they’re becoming a public danger.