After seeing "The Village," "The Corporation" and "The Manchurian Candidate" in recent weeks, I reflected on the thematic convergence in recent film releases: fear.
This list of films also includes "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "The Bourne Supremacy." This year's comic book superheroes ("Hellboy," "Spider Man 2") and high concept sci-fi films ("I, Robot") are entertaining but they are not asking the most important questions of our times, nor are the expressing news ideas in new ways. The fear films do.
Fear can sell movie tickets, perhaps because we are already afraid. There are elements in all these films that are cautionary; all of them address human, social, political and economic issues in some way; therefore our faith has something to say to them as well, as it does to all dimensions of human life.
Let's examine two of these recent films in more detail.
A master class in 'shaping and reshaping'
"The Corporation" is a 2 1/2 hour, highly structured documentary directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. Achbar also co-produced and co-directed "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" in 1992. This was a film about the role of corporate media in world politics and the power of visual and aural language to normalize consumerism as a way of life thus creating non-critical citizens and consumers at the same time, and it does indeed sound scary.
For anyone who is interested in political economics through the rise of "the corporation" as a governing institution in the United States, Canada and the world, "The Corporation" is a movie to see. It felt like 2 1/2 hours of a master class on the shaping, reshaping and status of democracy, civics, economics, history, health, geography, manufacturing, industrialization, globalization, agriculture, the environment and every other facet of 21st century life, especially the institution of information media, or what we used to call "the press."
From the historical dominance of the monarchy, the church, totalitarianism and democracy has emerged "the corporation" as the chief arbiter of the meaning of life, or lack thereof. Was anyone watching when this happened?
One of the most fascinating parts of the film is the history of "the corporation" and how it has come to have the legal status of an individual. It can buy and sell, make money, lose money, sue and be sued. But when a person outside the corporation sues it, no one is responsible because of its structure. The film presents such contemporary situations as Enron and the privatization of utility providers to demonstrate this reality.
Corporations, initially, were chartered by states to provide public service in some form. The film says that to use the word "business" in relation to a corporation is pejorative because corporations are really trying to take over the world. The only "moral" imperative that guides corporations is to make money for their shareholders --- nothing else. Profit is the incentive that makes capitalism work, thus the bottom line determines every decision that a corporation makes.
Because of their artificially determined legal "status" as an "individual" in the United States, the filmmakers analyze "The Corporation" according to the Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of the DSM-IV Personality Disorders, a tricky though clarifying methodology. Through this analysis, almost all the corporations they refer to are determined to have reckless disregard for others (by ignoring the environment); the incapacity to experience guilt; failure to conform to social norms, and so forth. The diagnosis: corporations display all the characteristics of a psychopathic personality.
The film focuses heavily on the environmental consequences of corporate failure to take responsibility for the impact of their company's on the environment in the effort to gain huge short-term profits. The film calls this failure "the death of birth."
To illustrate this, the film features the story of a woman activist from India who headed a movement to overthrow the imposed use of one-season seeds for the multiple use Neem Tree. The seeds forced on farmers had been sterilized so they would not generate seeds for the next planting season. She and the farmers were ultimately successful in their hard work to determine their own agricultural future and now continue to use nature's seeds. W. R. Grace has filed a patent for India's Neem Tree seeds.
Another story the film tells is about access to "water" in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia. When the water system needed to be overhauled in 2000, the World Bank dictated that it would only lend money if the water department was privatized; this meant that people would be paying 25 cents of every dollar earned ($2 a day on average) for water. Even rainfall would belong to the water company. Two people died, dozens were injured in the people's struggle to maintain control of the water department.
The whole issue of "copyrighting" DNA so that individuals, corporations, universities and nations can "own" life is frightening, but it is legally logical and possible under international copyright laws. This phenomenon was a subject that Maryknoll Productions prophetically documented in at least two video programs 8 to 10 years ago ("Banking on Life and Debt"; "The Global Banquet"). These dealt with sustainable crops around the world and the influence and impact of the World Bank, WTO and IMF in determining the future of food in a globalized economy and the creation of famine.
"The Corporation" has some bright spots and demonstrates possibilities for responsible action by making capitalism and corporations accountable in a democracy. It shows how one corporate head of a carpet manufacturing company came to realize the non-sustainability of his company's products, and documents the stages he went through to become corporately responsible and make changes in view of the preservation of the environment.
Besides the linguist/political-economist Noam Chomsky, the filmmakers also interview Michael Moore and several activists and economists from major universities to create a premise that makes our civic and social awareness and participation in democracy an obligation.
"The Corporation" has to be a contender for Best Documentary at the Oscars. It has already won many awards, including the Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
From 'Red' to 'Corporate' menace
"The Manchurian Candidate" is a well-crafted tale about the rise of corporation politics through the activities of a "private equity fund" company called Manchurian Global. The 2004 version reflects the 1962 original (based on the novel by Richard Condon) in broad strokes, but close enough to be recognizable.
Instead of the "Red menace" of the Cold War, we have now the "corporate menace" and it is presented as truly evil. The screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Dead Georgaris has been updated to reflect exactly what "The Corporation" puts forward: that corporations and their interests rule the world and now is the time to hold them accountable.
Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) plays an Army major who a captain led a squad of men on a recon mission in the Middle East in the days just before the Gulf War. A civilian guide accompanies them and they are ambushed and then disappears. As the film unfolds in the current day, we find that the new candidate for vice president (nominated independently of the president) was a sergeant under Marco: Raymond Shaw (Liev Schrieber). But Marco has nightmares about the three days between the ambush and their liberation, as does Shaw. Raymond's mother, Eleanor Shaw (played to chilling perfection by Meryl Streep) in a reverse Oedipus complex scenario, is at the heart of the drama.
As the action and tension continue toward the inevitable outcome, we discover more and more about Mongolian Global: they even provide contract soldiers to the government so that the wars being fought in every part of the globe by the United States can be paid for economically. Congress is run by corporate interests because there really is no distinction between government and business any more. "The Manchurian Candidate" presents frightening and dismal consequences and prospects for the future of humanity if good people don't begin to ask questions and participate actively in democratic and economic life now.
Fear is a strong emotion that results in fight or flight from that which makes us afraid. "The Village" is a tale about the consequences of fear used as a means to control and even protect people; we do not know what the ultimate response to the villagers fear will be. "The Bourne Supremacy" is a fictitious tale about the CIA imploding because of greed and conspiracy. No matter what our opinion is of "Fahrenheit 9/11," it presents a frightening situation.
How much fear is salutary, and what is the creative community really saying through the stories it is telling?
"The Corporation" is a documentary that can frighten viewers by the intensity and power of its constructed information. Yet it is also by its nature empowering as it prods us to responsible citizenship. A little fear can be a salutary thing.
"The Manchurian Candidate" is a terrible worst-case scenario conspiracy tale about the extremes of capitalism gone totally crazy because it is without consensual guidance and a conscience. It is frightening in the possibility it presents as well as the lack of possible solutions.
Coping with fear
What are we to do, then, with all this fear and anxiety being brokered through Hollywood? Are we to face it or escape it? How can our faith influence our response to the media of fear in its cycle of showing how fear is produced and thereby producing more?
There are two main ways we can call upon our faith at this time: one is to keep in mind the scripturally-based principles of Catholic Social Teaching to assess not only films, but the topics of the films as well. The second is to pay special attention to the Sunday scriptures offered to us in the liturgy.
In the August 8 Gospel (19th Sunday in Ordinary Time; Luke 12: 32), Jesus offers us sound advice that reflects the principles of Catholic Social Teaching and can be related to all these films: "Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be."
Faith, like fear, is a state of mind, will and the heart. We can flee it, or we can embrace it. Pauline Sister Rose Pacatte is co-author of the "Lights, Camera, Faith" movie lectionary series, and director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies-West in Culver City.
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