August
2004
Analyze
This! On the Couch is The Corporation
The Satya Interview with
Jennifer Abbott
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Photo courtesy of Jennifer
Abbott |
Jennifer Abbott
broke into the documentary field in 1998 with A Cow at My Table,
an award-winning film about farm animals, animal agribusiness, and the
‘battle for the consumer mind.’ Her most recent endeavor
is The Corporation, a collaboration with Mark Achbar and Joel
Bakan, who authored the book of the same name.
Already the top grossing documentary in Canadian history and the recipient
of over 20 international awards, including the Sundance audience choice
award for world cinema, The Corporation is sparking important public
dialogue and awareness about, as the title suggests, what it illustrates
is the dominant institution of our time.
Plans for The Corporation originally saw it as a television
series; but it evolved and was cut to a feature length and made into
the two hour-plus film that is now being screened internationally and
in 28 U.S. cities. Here, Jennifer Abbott talks with
Rachel Cernansky about some of her convictions and
reasons for being a filmmaker and making The Corporation, and
shares some of what she learned in the process.
Film seems to be your form of activism.
Briefly, what do you hope to accomplish with The Corporation?
I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that life as
we know it is being jeopardized by the most dominant institution of
our day, namely the corporation. I feel that this is without question
the most pressing issue and something we urgently have to address. The
goal for the film is to get people asking questions, to shift perspective
about this institution. It is so familiar—almost like the air
we breathe—it‘s all around us, sometimes we don’t
notice it.
And so our film is a call to action. We don’t hide what the goal
is, we even state it in our promotional material. We are hoping that
people who are not involved will become involved and those that are,
will have their activism reinvigorated.
Your other feature-length film, A
Cow at My Table, deals with meat and animals in our culture, an
issue that’s not entirely separate, but has a largely different
focus than The Corporation. Why did you decide to focus your work in
this direction, and why now?
At university, I took political science focusing on radical political
thought and women’s studies. I learned more about power, wealth
and resources, and started to have a more sophisticated analysis of
these issues. I became very interested in the way democracy was being
overrun by corporate rule in many respects and the way corporations
have become a governing body when in fact they have no electoral mandate.
So in terms of interest, it’s not a new issue for me. In 1999
I was working with Mark Achbar editing another film called Two Brides
And A Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage, when he and Joel were
in development with The Corporation. So I was in the environment
as it was being developed. Originally Mark asked me to come on board
to edit, and I was very keen to do that. As production was starting,
he asked me to consult. Then it became apparent that I was providing
a director’s vision equal to that of Mark’s, so I came on
board as a co-director as well.
One of the examples of corporate manipulation
in the film was the story of the two Fox reporters in Florida, Jane
Akre and Steve Wilson, who were fired for not backing down on the bovine
growth hormone exposé. Was that your attempt at including animal
issues in this film and bridging the gap for viewers between these issues?
Or was it just another example of corporate practice (or malpractice)
at work?
For me it was very important that we include nonhuman animals in case
studies of corporate harm, and that one provided a lot of opportunities
to examine the issues of corporate power. I came out of making A Cow
at My Table with one really big regret—that the situation for
dairy cows wasn’t clear. To me, dairy is one of the cruelest industries.
It’s hard to conceive of an industry as cruel as one that takes
calves away hours after birth (if even giving them that time together).
In addition to the fact that dairy cows spend so much of their lives
being pregnant and giving milk, they make up the majority of the downers,
who of course suffer even more, making an already horrific slaughter
experience even more horrific. So when I heard the Fox reporters and
had the opportunity to include at least some of the suffering of dairy
cows, I really wanted to go there.
With all that I have to ask, are you vegan?
I’ve been vegetarian for about 20 years. I became vegan in the
process of making A Cow at My Table and my son, for the most
part, is vegan. He’s four, that’s how we are raising him.
But at his playgroup he started to eat some free range organic eggs.
So I’m trying to find the line—I don’t want him to
feel socially ostracized and I want him to be making his own informed
choices.
It’s a really hard issue. The short story is that since he started
eating them, free range eggs from hens who aren’t slaughtered
have been in our household and every now and then I might eat one, as
well as a little wild salmon. It’s a very recent development;
I was strict vegan for the last eight years. I think it’s about
my going through and talking about these issues at length with my son.
We have two pigs that we rescued from slaughter. So these issues are
forefront in his mind. I want him to make his own decisions ultimately,
because I don’t think if I thrust my opinions down his throat
he’s going to end up being a lifelong vegan by any means.
What were you most surprised to learn
about when making the film?
People ask me that question a lot. I don’t think I get surprised
anymore. We’re so bombarded by information that seems so surreal
that you just can’t believe it’s happening—but it
is.
I often think that too, that there’s
nothing left to really be surprised by, but nonetheless I find myself
in shock quite a bit…
I guess I’m rarely surprised—although I wasn’t aware
of IBM and the Holocaust, that IBM actually supplied machines to concentration
camps and their technology was that involved in the Holocaust. I was
taken aback by that because with a historic example, you think you’ve
dealt with things in an in-depth way; then you find out something that
seems so important and critical that you didn’t know (well I didn’t
know). So that one surprised me.
What I have also been surprised by is not so much an issue or a story,
but getting to know some corporate insiders. For those like myself (well,
my father’s a corporate person so I have had exposure to that
culture, but I’ve never worked for a big corporation and haven’t
been part of that environment), I think we often have stereotypes of
CEOs and those at the helm. You realize that they’re not up in
their ivory towers rubbing their hands together saying “What kind
of harm can we inflict on the world?” They are people like everyone
else, obviously, and they care about some of the same issues we do.
Some of them are extraordinary people who are great thinkers and very
philosophical. Not all of them, that’s for sure, and not all of
them share even some of the issues that we’re concerned about.
But some of them do and they have their hands tied. It was surprising
to see the candor that the interview subjects displayed (and I must
credit my co-director Mark Achbar for that, he did most of the interviews).
In a way, that touches on one of my
questions—in the film, it seemed as though Ray Anderson [CEO of
Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer]
had been genuinely unaware of the negative consequences of his company’s
operations, and industry in general, for that matter. This is encouraging
for many people who find it hard to believe that a CEO doesn’t
know that his or her economic success comes at the expense of some aspect
of the public good. Rather, it usually seems that they don’t care,
or separate themselves from being affected by the consequences, etc.
Did you ever expect such a change of heart—and practice—from
a leader of one of the world’s largest corporations?
Ray Anderson is a rarity because his epiphany was so profound and so
transformative. I think corporate culture is set up to compartmentalize
life: there are so many barriers erected between the decision-makers,
and sometimes decisions get made in a very piecemeal way, and they don’t
see the harm. For 21 years, Ray Anderson says, he didn’t even
give a thought to what his company was doing to the environment.
For me, anything is possible, in terms of people’s personal transformations,
so I wasn’t surprised. But it was quite late in the game when
we did that interview, and I restructured the entire film to make room
for him. I felt like it was the interview we’d been waiting for;
partly because, for me, it was very important that The Corporation be
a radical environmentalist film, and he brings those issues into the
fold in a very poetic way. I am quite inspired by him, although I have
to say, we can’t count on the Ray Andersons of the world. We have
no control as citizens over the hearts and minds of corporate decision-makers.
It’s encouraging that some of
his ideas are radically environmental—but in a respectable sense
of the word, where radical is positively revolutionary and insightful,
rather than in an alienating sense.
Well that’s it—he’s a corporate insider that is saying
profoundly radical things. He says, in the future, people like him will
be in jail. A lot of the most damning critique of the corporation actually
comes from insiders, and that’s very important to the film. [Nobel
Prize-winning economist] Milton Friedman himself says there are big
problems with externalities; or we have Robert Monks, who’s a
past CEO of over 12 corporations, comparing the corporation to a shark
and calling it an externalizing machine. This is very important because
many corporate insiders have not felt immediately defensive when they
see the film and some are willing to engage with these issues. I don’t
think we’ve demonized them—we didn’t want to. They
have agency and responsibility but these issues are not black and white.
What do you feel are some of the solutions
that can reverse the sociopath psychology that legally enables business
to act with impunity?
Taking away corporate personhood. Corporations simply should not have
the rights of flesh and blood people—for one, their resources
dwarf people to such a great extent that in a battle, inevitably they
are going to win. As citizens we are supposed to have control of corporations,
yet that simply isn’t the case, and corporate personhood is part
of the reason why.
The ‘best interest principle’ has to be reexamined, which
states that the corporation must prioritize the shareholders’
interests—interpreted by the courts to mean profit—above
everything else, including the public good. Here we have a dominant
institution that is legally mandated to prioritize profit above the
public good. That is absolutely leading us down a very destructive road.
The legal system is supposed to reflect the values of society. Typically
it lags behind, but I think if you asked anybody on the streets if this
principle should stand, they’d say no, it’s ridiculous.
Even though historically the government has not always been perfect,
at least in theory they’re supposed to safeguard the public good.
There are some very big inherent flaws in this institution which we
constructed. I don’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow,
but along a broader historical trajectory, there’s hope for some
big changes. No dominant institution in history has defied the law that
at some point its power recedes. I don’t think the corporation’s
going to be the first. That’s a very long and broad historical
view, by the way [laughs]—I must emphasize I don’t think
anything’s happening overnight.
Does the responsibility to change things for the better lie
solely with corporations? Or is public ignorance part of the problem?
I don’t think we can reduce these issues. To say that corporations
are responsible for all the harm would, without question, be a simplification.
It’s hard as citizens today because frequently we’ll act
and then find we have very little power, and sometimes we don’t
even have the power we thought we did. If you look at the last American
election—I’m Canadian—but that whole election was
such a farce. To be a Democrat in the U.S. must have been infuriating,
and of course to watch it from the rest of the world was infuriating,
given the destruction that Bush and his cohorts have inflicted upon
the world.
We have Michael Moore saying just as much in The Corporation
when he references Bowling for Columbine and his family being
from Flint, Michigan, where they all work in the auto industry. If we
look at that closely, the auto industry—and petrochemicals—might
lead to the melting of the icecaps; they are threatening our climate
and our survival. He says that we have to look at our own individual
responsibility in the collective harm. I believe that’s true—that’s
the reason I became a filmmaker in some ways. I’ve recognized
that that was a strength of mine, a way I could contribute to these
pressing issues. All actions of individuals add up, and we have a responsibility
to make decisions in our day to day life which attempt not to contribute
to the harm and contribute to healing and to going forward in a more
compassionate, peaceful way.
My next question kind of points in that direction. The often-touted
beauty behind capitalism is that it provides incentive for business
innovation. Your film obviously is trying to illustrate that concept
taken to an extreme. Can you suggest alternative ways to tap human drives
to be productive without relying on exploitation?
I don’t think that profit itself is inherently bad; it’s
the extreme system we have in place that is problematic, where there’s
never enough profit. Charles Kernaghan in our film says it very well
(actually it’s Michael Moore but Charles Kernaghan makes reference
to it): with sweatshop workers, if their wage was increased the tiniest
fraction, they could have a living wage, and if that would mean western
consumers would have to spend an extra dollar or two on a garment—well
that’s okay. It’s like, why do they have to make as much
profit as they do? As Michael Moore asks in The Big One, why
do they have to have that many billion dollars, why can’t they
have half that many billion dollars?
In terms of alternatives…For the most part, I feel that people
don’t want to cause suffering and harm; they care deeply about
things like having clean water and clean air. If given the choice, many
would like a society that is compassionate to the weaker elements; the
disabled, the elderly, children, nonhuman animals, the homeless. They
would allow some of their taxes (though that’s not the only way)
to assist those people—they would take an economic hit—so
that our society is just and more compassionate.
This globalized economy, which is so cold and really so lacking in compassion
and justice, is not the only way. As people, I think we crave something
else. We can go towards something else and people all around the world
are working towards something else in a very inspirational way.
When people who already agree with the message of the film meet with
or come up against individuals within the corporate world or who believe
in it, there is, almost always, a perceptual barrier preventing genuine
dialogue between them. Is there an approach that can bridge this divide
and lead to effective communication?
A lot—not all—of corporate insiders are willing to engage
with these issues. We really tried in the film not to reduce these issues
to black and white or point a finger and demonize corporate insiders.
It’s inaccurate to do that. I’m not saying there aren’t
people motivated by greed that have trampled the rights of others and
have done enormous harm; that is the case, but it’s not the case
across the board. In any situation where one is attempting to dialogue
with another who has a different point of view, trying to understand
that person’s perspective is one way to step back from a very
confrontational-defensive approach that really doesn’t get us
anywhere. Sometimes I’ve managed to dialogue about these issues
with corporate insiders in a way that I think has been quite productive.
Have you?
I’ve tried. [laughs]
Yeah. It’s not always productive. And that’s okay too; we
have to choose our battles. We all have limited resources and it’s
best to be realistic in terms of what—who—we choose to engage.
I’m lucky as a filmmaker, I can make a film and then it has a
life of its own. [laughs.]
What kind of reaction have you had so
far to the film?
It’s pretty overwhelming actually. We’re the top grossing
Canadian documentary in history at this point. We’re very happy
with the theatrical release; we’ve won around 20 international
awards, including the audience choice award for world cinema at Sundance.
That’s particularly gratifying because it’s the audience
choosing, so you really feel you made a film that they like. In the
business press we’ve had really positive reviews—there’s
been critiques, but overall very positive in the New York Times,
Wall Street Journal, The Economist, etc. Fortune Magazine
had four CEOs rate our film: one gave it a four out of four, two gave
it 3 1/2 out of four, and one gave it a three out of four. [laughs.]
What can people do, to change things?
Our website, thecorporation.com, provides links to all kinds of people
and organizations doing things to change the situation. These issues
are so complex. I think everybody has to ask, What are my strengths,
what is it that I can best contribute? Many people already are so engaged
with these issues, but those that are struggling with that question
have to look honestly at themselves and find their strengths; and also
realize it’s not an easy road. Hopefully there’ll be victories
propelling them along the way, but a lot of times those victories are
few and far between. But we still need to get up in the morning and
be motivated by the desire to shift pretty fundamental problems.
What about yourself—what do you
do to change things, aside from working on films?
I live on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean that only has 1,000 full
time residents. Just being an active part of that community is really
important. We have a very large organic garden. One of my favorite things
to do with my son is plant and go through the entire seed cycle together,
and eventually save the seeds. For me, taking myself out of the global
economy that way, and the opportunity to live in a rural environment
and do things like that is very important. I really am inspired by Thomas
Berry, he speaks of how educating our young is one of the most important
things. To really instill in them a reverence for the natural and nonhuman
world, and our interconnectedness as humans with other animals and with
the natural world, and not to see ourselves as apart from it.
To learn more about the film and ideas for action you can take, see
TheCorporation.com.
To order “A Cow at My Table,” visit www.petacatalog.org.
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