Note: It took less than a year for the urban progressive festival crowd who cheered this film to abandon all principle and mindlessly comply with medical segregation, corporate-government diktat, and the trashing of bodily autonomy. I always suspected that the cottage industry of left-leaning documentaries that boomed in the wake of The Corporation was successful only in flattering liberal audiences and keeping a few filmmakers in work, and the fate of The New Corporation provides the grim denouement to this 20-year era. In 2020 you could still say “Davos” without being ex-communicated by the tribe. In 2023, the WEF is praised by the so-called Left for its COVID “safety” measures, and The New Corporation languishes on Tubi sandwiched between the Area 52 and Roswell docs.

If Unilever VP John Coyne cheerfully admits that his conscience was troubled by 2003’s The Corporation—which he does, right at the start of this sequel—he also adds that big business simply adapted to a PR crisis by adding the promise of “social responsibility” to its apocalyptic program of lies. Thus we see the endless ouroboros of life under capitalism, which can only absorb and market everything, including its own exposure. It’s a bottomless hell given a snappily entertaining sheen by returning filmmakers Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbot, with pundits including Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, UBC’s Peter Dauvergne, and the always on-point Chris Hedges, plus a rather amazing cast of talking heads from the Archonic side of the equation. 

Take your pick which of these ratfuckers is the most nauseating. Personally, I’d nominate the duo of Shannon May and Jay Kimmelman, beta-testing privatized education in Africa (naturally) through their Bridge International Academies. “Private schools for the poor,” declares an aroused Kimmelman, “it’s a 51-billion-dollar-a-year market.” While riffing further on 2003’s definition of corporation-as-psychopath, the New Corporation goes both wider and deeper, eventually diving into the capitalization of the individual through voluntary surveillance—a new phenomenon otherwise known as social media. This gives way to another painful reality: that Disaster Capitalism runs riot under COVID. And so it goes on. The film is highly recommended, if gutting, but the fear remains that we’re probably just indulging in more resistance porn. Watch and then maybe ditch your phone (if it’ll let you.)

Stir, September 2020