Week Ten: The Corporation

Investigating the role of the corporation in daily life
and its impact on a global scale

The notion of the corporation and how it pertains to every day life is an interesting concept because it not only applies to business applications but also towards the military, politics, economics, and everything around us—even artmaking and expressing ourselves through various media outlets.

These strucutures often have their own hidden agenda of what is to occur next or who their audience will consist of, which typically is the unsuspecting, general public. After reviewing video documentaries on the Yes Men and how corporate practices almost dictate our daily lives, it is important to recognize that multiple forms of civil obedience to the system are preached in almost every school and university in the world. Students are praised for conforming to societal ideals and those who act up or out of line, are often punished.

In many instances, corporations will blame their incorrect, unethical or bad behavior on financial stakeholders and those who provide allocations for advertising in the corporation's publications, television commercials, billboards, and websites. Often the corporations state that they have a higher authority to answer to when at times, it appears that these two conglomerates work together to push that pre-conceived agenda onto the public and stakeholders.

One important example from the recent Yes Men documentary was when the two associates went to a college campus dressed up as representatives of a large food chain and the World Health Organization. By representing these two mega groups, a concept was discussed of how to eradicate world hunger while at the same time, finding a system to recycle human waste.

The answer concluded that individuals would harness their own human waste and create hamburger patties for the citizens of the third world to consume on as a form of combating hunger. Of course, this documentary depicted the outrage of the students but also displayed their initial curiousity of how this concept could occur despite the ethical and hygiene issues.

It was almost like the students believed what they were being taught and many of them were taking notes on this economic principle. It was not until several minutes into the presentation that students became outraged on the concept and actually left the lecture hall in disgust. Meanwhile, by serving everyone simple cheeseburgers from the fast food chain, the two representatives drove the point home. This is a great example of how corporations can sometimes push nonsense onto its consumers and hide their ingredients or hidden agendas in fine print.