The Corporation

In the film “The Corporation", it is brought to the peoples attention that big corporations are doing whatever it takes in order to take in as much profit as they can. They achieve their goal by creating this sense of culture and identity. The big corporations of today are the result of well planned engineering creating a culture and identity that you must belong to. In Klein’s “No Logo”, she makes her idea clear that corporations are not trying to sell their product, but their brand name, their logo. With stronger attachments to a sense of identity and culture, come bigger profits for monster corporations. The idea of selling a brand as discussed in “No Logo” helped create these big corporations. First there were magazines, then these magazines were able to be produced at large quantities at a time and be purchased over a large group of population. And within these magazines distributed out to the masses came advertisements telling people what they should behave like, and with that came a sense of culture and identity. And as a sense of culture and identity began to grow stronger, so did corporations, and that leads to Mark Achbar’s film, “The Corporation”.

To me, the film is a continuation on the idea of culture and identity and how it has affected the world. It goes on about how out of control corporations have gone with this sense of culture and identity. It has come down to the point where as long as the corporations get their profits, it does not matter who or what gets hurt in the process. Corporations tell you how you should live, and at the expense, children in Third World countries are working for a few cents an hour and pollution is rising.

Corporations can also be seen as more powerful than the government now. Corporations have the capacity to influence the people with a greater impact. Having such power left unchecked lets them do whatever that pleases them. Even though it has been brought to the worlds attention of child labor in Third World countries and their unfair payment, it seems as though very little has been done about it. A similar issue brought up in the film was with the hormonal drug administered to cows in order to produce more milk. Despite how harmful it was to the animals and potentially to the people, this big corporation was able to shut the media up and continue reaping its profits. After watching the video it seems as though the corporation has been able to mask itself as a harmless company out to provide people with what they want, when in reality, so many people are being treated unfairly and the environment being neglected. And despite efforts, the corporation has been able to keep this mask on and grow its profits.