ERIN BROCKOVICH

THREE STARS - Thought-Provoking

According to social psychologists, corporations, by their very nature, are identified as being soulless synergistic life forms, selfishly self-absorbed and consuming the people who staffed them.

Although the individual officers and board members of such corporations may be good, sensitive and moral people as individuals, their actions as a group, on behalf of the corporation, are often devoid of their individual values and ethics. By making decisions based on what is best for the corporation, such decisions can reach a monstrous level of self-protection for the corporation disregarding the individuals it affects.

Though this truth has been presented on film many times, the most recent example is based on the true life story of an unemployed single mother named Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts).

Having been hurt by her former husbands, Brockovich is an extremely intelligent yet jaded and crude woman who is trying to provide for her three young children. Having no education or experience, Brockovich desperately creates a position for herself in the employ of a lawyer named Ed Masry (Albert Finney).

When Masry agrees to do pro bono work for a poor working class family whose home is being purchased by its next door neighbor, PG&E, Brockovich discovers an alarming secret: PG&E has been poisoning the ground water around their electric plant for decades.

Their use of a very destructive form of chromium to cool the pistons of its huge generating plant has caused cancer, birth defects and a multitude of debilitating illnesses on the population of the small town near the plant.

Although it becomes clear that the managers and corporate officers of PG&E are aware of the problem, their solution is not to warn the people of the danger in which they live, but to protect their corporation by creating a plan of disinformation and home purchases.

What makes this decision even more evil is that the corporation is a 28 billion dollar operation and can easily afford to protect the lives of the people who are their neighbors. But rather than do the right thing, the company lawyers choose to sacrifice the lives of their neighbors to protect the assets of their corporation. It is the children who suffer most because of this choice.

When Brockovich discovers the truth, she brilliantly orchestrates a case against PG&E and gathers over 600 claimants who join together in their case against the utility giant.

Seeing themselves as David going up against Goliath, Brockovich and Masry are successful in getting the largest settlement of its kind in American history, a $330 million dollar admission of wrong.

Though this situation ends in demanded justice through the legal system, the underlying message is disconcerting.

If, as we discovered, corporations can render the moral and ethical souls of their officers and boards impotent, then the threat to human lives as such corporations proliferate is enormous. Rather than individual business owners taking personal responsibility for the impact their business decisions have on their community and neighbors, the detached and distant decisions of such corporate leaders and their lawyers fight against being held accountable for their joint decisions.

Though legal recourse is one way to hold such corporations responsible, such a solution is possible only after the damage has been done and lives have been destroyed. The greater solution, and one which this film did not explore, is for the individuals to lead such corporations to stand up against the self-protection of the corporate culture and do what is right for humanity even if it costs the corporation profits.

At the end of the film as Brockovich and Masry have collected their 40% of the settlement and are now moving into their own beautiful corporate offices, there is an unsettling sense that they are now a corporation of their own with all the dangers and temptations of self-interest that implies.

“Erin Brockovich” is an important film as it helps us explore the realities of standing up and fighting unethical corporate giants which, like Goliath of old, threaten our lives and families. If we are to survive, we must find a way to bring a moral soul into corporate offices and board rooms that protects us all.

(words: 692)

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