RIII casebook: RIII as Corporate Psychopath (Derek)

RIII casebook: RIII as Corporate Psychopath

Derek DiMatteo, 2012.10.22

“Corporations are people, my friend.” – Mitt Romney

“Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in its behaviour, this type of ‘person’ typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.” –  Kenneth Chisholm, synopsis of The Corporation film; source: imdb.com

Over the past several years the US has experienced the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Bad behavior in the halls of corporate financial institutions (Enron, AIG, Lehman Bros), and in corporations generally (GM failure, BP oil spill), have created a climate in which the public might welcome a play that addresses these issues in a critical way and which works to affirm the need for ethics and social justice within the corporate world. RIII is a play that decries the lust for power and argues for the ethical wielding of that power for the greater good. Framing RIII in such a broad way would allow for us to set the play in the modern world of corporate misbehavior, intrigue, and psychopathology. Doing so could enable a radical critique of corporations, and hopefully raise awareness about corporate citizenship.

We start by reconceiving the action of the play as occurring within a corporate structure. Instead of The War of the Roses, we get an internal power-play between the rival factions of a company or between two subsidiaries of a large conglomerate, where the York subsidiary is getting dominated by Lancaster subsidiary, but plots its ascendancy. The main characters of the play become executives and managers within the conglomerate. For example, Richard would be an executive in the York subsidiary who wants to become CEO of the conglomerate. To do so, he has to eliminate rival executives who are in favor ahead of him in the eyes of the Board of Directors, or who otherwise stand in his way. He does through various means, including framing one of them for industrial espionage (i.e. treason) or becoming allies with them (the character of Anne, an executive who reluctantly allies herself with Richard for self-preservation). Finally, the board elects him CEO. He is autocratic and a bit of a psychopath. He embodies the corporation and its ethos.

The final battle would be in a board room or in a shareholder’s meeting where the two sides would verbally spar and a vote would be taken. If this is not dramatic enough to sell tickets, then we could do the scene with some of the physical violence that Shakespeare used. For example, CEO Richard draws a knife and runs at his rival Richmond, who defends himself by redirecting the CEO out the 30^th story window using Aikido, symbolizing that it is Richard’s own self/momentum that proves his undoing.

But let’s back up.

The night before the final battle, CEO Richard has a dream. In it he is accosted by all the other executives and employees he exploited and killed. The dream should also contain a rebuke from families or people in a community whose lives were ruined as a result of his actions or his deceit (e.g., their water was poisoned, they got cancer from toxic waste, they were displaced, he fired all of them from a factory for unionizing). The final group of people should turn into a mob in his nightmare and start to move in on him, encircling him with hands outstretched, moaning, trying to grab his clothes, as he sinks (the imagery evokes both zombie films and drowning in an ocean). He awakes in a cold sweat, terrified. He is mentally unhinged, and has his nearly schizophrenic soliloquy, which illustrates the corporation’s refusal to acknowledge its own soulless conscienceless nature, even when confronted by it (as in the dream). The profit principle / imperative of shareholder value provide the mechanism for repressing any sense of soul or conscience.

CEO Richard’s embodiment of the corporate ethic would be psychopathic, while his arch-rival Richmond’s embodiment would be eco-friendly, ethical, and social-justice aware. Richmond comes from the Mexican unit of the Lancaster subsidiary. He is a handsome and charismatic leader who understands his workers, approves of workers’ unions, and does good work within the community because he believes that a corporation needs to be socially aware and a good local (and global) citizen. However, CEO Richard disparages Richmond and the Mexican employees of that branch of the company in his oration to his army (i.e. the executive support team which is going to the board meeting with him) on the morning of the final battle. His rhetoric in this brief speech is a continuation of his larger pattern of classism, racism, and exploitative behavior.

The hope is that the audience would see Richard’s psychpathology and understand that if corporations are people, they need to be held to the same standards as actual real people. They need a soul and a conscience.