Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott return with Joel Bakan co-directing this time 17 years after their landmark 2003 Documentary The Corporation which she co-directed with Mark Achbar based on Bakan's screenplay. The pair have been stewing over the last few years seeing that corporations have taken the diagnosis from the original film as being psychopaths to rebrand themselves as being on your side environmentally conscious and declaring that they have families too and want to leave the plant in a better state for both your and their grandchildren.
The directors manage to make their way to the World Economic Forum at the invitation of its founder Klaus Schwab which is the focus of the first section of the film. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is the executive in the crosshairs for most of this sequence. He holds court in Davos where the world financial elite meet to exchange views and set world economic policy. Current and past Heads of Sate mingle with billionaire CEO's and think tank chairs while techies looking to fund their startups struggle to get some face time. Dimon trumpets his plan to rebuild Detroit where in reality as the prior practices of his bank and his colleagues including floating dodgy mortgage funds lead to the collapse of the market, their bailout, and the demise of Detroit in the first place.
The documentary as its predecessor continues to explore the expected suspects Google, Amazon, G.E. Facebook, Pepsi Co, and Merck outlining their schemes to avoid paying taxes and sheltering their profits offshore. Even a sequence where Microsoft invests to educate children in developing countries through a program known as Bridge International Academies is skewered as the teachers are not fully qualified, tethered to tablet that they are forced to follow strictly. The takeaway; if the driving principle is to make a profit social responsibility, a green agenda and making the world a better place will always come second.
The most off-putting part of the film is the list of steps referred to as the Corporation Playbook. The directors outline a series of steps that Corporations take to put themselves at the centre of society. The main points is not paying their fair share of taxes creates a shortfall in the government's budget to deliver services. Because there is a shortfall the most vulnerable citizens suffer. Here steps up the seemingly altruistic Corporation to privatize the former government service: water, prisons, war, and education for a profit. They proclaim the government is falling short therefore the community-minded cooperation has to act. In the last third of the piece, the Directors touch on the rise of the progressive movement. Operation Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Progressives running for and being elected to office as a pushback to the Market Society. Black Lives Matters and Covid-19 are also explored as a coda. as The additions seems a bit forced and the film would have been more cohesive without the last minute inclusion. The directors raise some good points but do not cover any new ground that the viewer has likely contemplated while watching a B.P. ad on how they are doing great things for the environment hoping that the consumer has forgotten the event of the Deep Water Horizon Horizon spill. If the conclusion from the first film was that Cooperation are Psychotic The New Corporation lays out the case that 17 years later it is in fact Chaotic Neutral.
*** Out of 4
The New Corporation: The Unfortunate Necessary Sequel | Joel Bakan/Jennifer Abbot | 2020 | 106 Minutes.
Tags: World Economic Forum, Davos, Klaus Schwab, J.P. Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, Detroit, Bridge International Academies, Corporate Citizenry, Tax Avoidance, Privatization, Microsoft, Amazon, G.E., Progressive Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Protest, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19.
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