The theme of corporate malfeasance is an enduring one. It is
tied in to a sense of economic disempowerment, as we take note of the fact that
corporations are growing ever larger as well as distant, carving out more of an
autonomous role for themselves at the same time as they create ever more
demands on workers.
During the waning years of the disastrous Bush
administration, we saw the incredible hubris that characterized corporate
America, in the guise of Wall Street. An unprecedented economic crisis was
ushered in by our biggest banks and financial institutions, and it seemed for a
moment as if the whole edifice of modern capitalism would implode. This was
only a moment, one that witnessed the collapse of financial stalwarts such as
Lehman Brothers, and the dizzying prospect of similar fates for other institutions.
It was only because these banks hold such a firm control of the economy, one
that obligated the public sector to step in and provide massive bailouts, that
this prospect was narrowly avoided. The damage to our economy was considerable,
however, and our economy shrunk dramatically.
There were massive job losses and untold economic assets evaporated or
were severely pared back, assets upon which so many average workers depended. Such
was the case with my meager retirement savings which experience losses.
And yet we seem to have returned to the previous status quo.
Our form of predatory capitalism that has taken form during the past fifty
years, and in which capital movements have become much less transparent as facilitated
by globalization, seem to have returned with the same swagger it had before.
Our biggest companies continue on the trend towards growing monopolization, and
no one was ever called to account for the malfeasance of Wall Street during the
last economic debacle. Nowadays, corporate control over our political structure
has tightened, and both parties, not just the most obstreperous and unreformed
conservative sectors, but both parties, continue to kowtow to big money that is
wielded by these ever-expanding autonomous entities that demand lower taxation,
less oversight and more public subsidies. With a conservative supreme court
that put a blessing on this process with its Citizens United decision, shadowy
money has hit Washington like a tsunami, and meanwhile, the economy continues
to linger in a semi-moribund state, compounded by the shenanigans of the Tea
Party and stunts such as closing down the government.
Our corporations are growing much too big, and they are not
helping us to expand our economy to create opportunities for all workers. We
have, instead, a samurai class of executives, those who command incredible
salaries, and who fashion themselves as saviors of the economy, at the same
time as they continue to slash work rolls and peel back worker protections and
benefits. It is no wonder that we have such an incredible distrust of our
corporations.
In the 2005 film The Constant Gardener, based on a novel by
John Le Carré, we have another fable about corporate malfeasance. It ties in to
the idea of predatory institutions that will brook no restraint, but also, into
guilt over colonialist practices of the past. The main thesis would seem to be
that these practices never really were finalized with the end of colonial
regimes, and instead have become privatized, with new agents.
It details the life of a young idealist couple, Justin and Tessa Quayle, played by
Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, who are forced to confront evidence of this
exploitative and colonial regime, which is translated now to the economic
realm, but which nonetheless continues to hold sway over the undeveloped
countries of the world. Justin Quayle is a member of the British High
Commission, and as such, has lived a life of comfort and blissful ignorance,
protected as he is by a cocoon. He is confronted and challenged by an
idealistic woman, Tessa, who is probably much too earnest to seem plausible, and as such has a dreamy quality, but who in the film challenges him to see how this life is woven out of a
tissue of deceits and lies.
They are working in Nairobi, Kenya, and while Justin is
seduced by the idealism of his wife, he still believes in the possibility of
using official channels. He is somewhat indifferent to the suffering he sees
around him, but his wife isn’t, and in a story that becomes as much an expose
as a thriller, he is forced to confront the evidence that big corporations, in
the form of big Pharma (pharmaceuticals), are holding illegal and inhumane drug
trials for an experimental drug developed to treat the upcoming tuberculosis
plague that is forecast for the near future.
The stakes, then, are very high. We have shadowy entities
that are operating for profit, are deceiving government agencies and, in the
most dreary way, have already suborned these agencies into collaborating them
by appealing to a renewed form of economic nationalism that is, in reality, not
nationalism at all, for capital recognizes no national ground. There are drug
trials taking place, and drugs are being distributed to what are termed “dispensable”
people, the poor of Africa. The data from these illegal and inhumane trials are
furthermore being massaged to support claims of effectiveness and bolster the
prospects of these big pharmaceutical companies.
These are shocking charges, and it is in reality not far
removed from other charges that have circulated in the media during the past
several decades. We know, after all, of the way that coal companies have evaded
oversight and thus escaped being held to account for mining disasters, and of
how BP (British Petroleum) cut costs and received favorable terms for drilling
in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, with disastrous results. We have the
case of the fertilizer plant explosion which leveled an entire town in Texas
recently, and other notable instances that come to mind, those that are
situated in undeveloped countries, in which industries, from textile industries
in Bangladesh that have created unsafe working conditions that have led to
dreadful disasters to Bopal disaster in India, where roving capitalism creates
unsafe niches of economic activity that imperil the local populations.
It is this evidence of conspiracy that leads to the pursuit
of Justin, who is determined to discover the truth after his wife is murdered. In
the depths of his grief, he experiences a change that is tantamount to the one
we see in the protagonist in another recent film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist,
and we see him questioning his privileged world view. He is pursued, not
ostensibly by government agencies, but in a far more terrifying prospect, by
private organizations that operate with little oversight. There are, indeed,
private armies, and a whole apparatus that has been bought and paid for by
these groups.
The end was never going to be a surprise. The pursuit was
breathtaking but also short, and we have a protagonist who discovers secrets
and see his own illusions being stripped away. This takes place over
breathtaking African panoramas, as planes transport us over other crisis areas,
from teeming urban slums to the barren plains of southern Sudan. This is a vast
land, and life is vulnerable even in the best of circumstances.
We have, then, a protagonist whose destiny is akin to that
of a tragic character. He is blinded by his own delusions, and little heeds the
warnings he is given by his wife, and the signs that are provided by the
colleagues who are all, in various degrees, compromised. Revelation comes
slowly as he pieces the details together, and as he does so, it is evident that
he, too, will be killed at some point, and that the corporate samurai will find
a way of evading accountability once again.
And this is part and parcel of an ongoing Hollywood critique
of our modern day economic and political edifice. We have a political system
that is dysfunctional, and is also thoroughly compromised. We have a western
colonialist world view that has been transposed to corporate entities, where
massive corporations carve out parts of international economy to create bases
of operation, where profits are hidden, where money flows in shadowy ways to
private entities and ends up financing both Tea Party entities and the Karl
Rove creation known as “Crossroads America”, but also, to the Democratic Party
as a way of compromising the entire edifice of our government. At the same
time, we have the relentless spiel about how government should mimic business
practices, as if our government should be run in accordance with the same
authoritarian structures that characterize the average company, where employees
can be fired or displaced or demoted on a whim, and discrimination is allowed,
as is the case for companies that currently hire people based on their social
or religious or other criteria (a practice they can’t sustain if they receive
government funding).
That Justin and his wife would be sacrificed, as well as the
noble black doctor Arnold Bluhm who tries to aid them, is unavoidable. If this fable was
intended to shame the populace into demanding more accountability from
corporations, it seems to have had no effect whatsoever. We remember that this
movie was released in 2005, and the great Bush implosion followed shortly
thereafter, displacing many and causing a foreclosure crisis that has continued
to have enduring effects.
The fact is that no one was called to account. The message
rings on deaf ears, for the most part, even though there is the sense that at
times a reaction is provoked, such as was evident in the Occupy Wall Street
movement. We bury our unease because we all seem to suffer, if I may say so,
from a lack of imagination to see that things don’t have to be the way they
are, and we don’t have to live in a Dollarocracy (a term I heard on a recent
Bill Moyers program), as our political system has become.
Sadly, it seems as if Globalization has resulted not in the
exporting of development to the rest of the world, but the importing and
accentuation of underdevelopment in our own country.
