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The Corporation Documentary What stood out most to you? The Corporation is a 2003 documentary by Mark Achbar based on the book under the same name by Joel Bakan. The most intriguing aspect of the documentary is the manner in which corporations strayed away from their responsibility of social betterment. In the beginning, the documentary illustrates that corporations started as elements to help the public and for the public good. It further continues to discuss the corporations that were originally chartered with stipulations that clearly layout to help avoid the injustices that are experienced today. Intriguingly, the signing of the fourteenth amendment between 1890 and 1910 on the basis of free slaves was the turning point for most corporations. This amendment granted equal rights to people in terms of pursuits of happiness, property, and capital. Rather than the amendment being used as a means to solidify the objectives and purposes of corporations, corporations found a way to skew the amendment to include all corporations as individuals. This way, the amendment allotted the rights granted to a person to those of a corporation. In the corporation, a white CEO of a company says "No soul to save, nobody to incarcerate." This statement illustrates the dangers in considering corporations as individuals. How did it make you feel? In my view, granting corporations the same factor as an individual thing was the worst Supreme Court decision because most of them started acting in a manner that they did not care for the people or the environment, but just for themselves. This is evident in the psychological assessment of the traits of a corporation since it is given the similar privileges and rights with those of people. Being self-centered, most corporations are psychopathic in nature destroying the

environment and harming people. For example, the first segment of the documentary depicts some of the corporate harms to workers in the form of layoffs, union busts, factory fires, and sweatshops among others. It is saddening to see that most corporations pursue objectives that are contrary to what they were intended to do, which is to provide a “public good.” In this sense, I feel that the nature of corporations needs to be revisited and revised to correct the personification element. Corporations need to be treated as entities and not as individuals. What did you learn? Despite the negative portrayal of corporations, they still have a constructive place in the modern society. I have learned that there are many economic benefits that people could not be experiencing today were it not for corporations. However, there is the need for people to rethink what is happening within these corporations. They happen to be in control of the world today and the influence spills over to governments, which are run by corporate influence. These corporate influences are to an extent responsible for the decisions made regarding environmental laws and legal reforms that tend to benefit the business community. This makes it more difficult for the consumers to sue these corporations for the atrocities they cause to the environment and to other human beings. From the documentary, it is evident that corporations disregard human health and well-being and more horrible things that companies do to make ridiculous profits. With similar rights with people, then they should be punished similarly with people who commit such offenses.