The Reynolds Center has announced its 2008 fall workshop schedule.
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The Reynolds Center has opened registration for select 2008 free online seminars.
Topics include:
*Intermediate Business Journalism
*Covering Private Companies
*Business Journalism Boot Camp
At first glance, "The Manchurian Candidate" is a film about a questionable war hero and political campaigning, but underlying is a story of corporate influence.
Pervasive throughout the movie is the firm Manchurian Global, popping up in calculated introductions and business news broadcasts. Its overall impact on the characters is not even detected until at least halfway through the movie. While this film is far-fetched, even cheesy at times, it is successful in perpetuating the negative image associated with business in the wake of recent executive indictments and scandal. It makes you think twice about what motivates decisions in the political realm.
Business is portrayed in an unflattering light in "The Manchurian Candidate," directed by Jonathan Demme. The disregard among executives for moral decision-making and lack of consideration for the people those decisions affect is pushed to the forefront by the end of the film. It appears that corporate executives only possess emotion when on the brink of downfall.
"Your god is money," says main character Raymond Shaw's senator mother (Meryl Streep) to Manchurian Global executives.
Surprisingly, this movie remains politically neutral, hurling the focus on business as the only possible culprit of political corruption. As the scams unfold, much of it appears too extreme to be realistic. But stripping the story down to rich corporations funding skeptical scientific endeavors is more believable. And while this in itself is not corrupt, what makes a company stop its experiments if bad, yet profitable, consequences are revealed?
Former shareholders of the global company turn out to be past presidents, foreign communists and dictators. This knowledge has the audience asking what these shareholders offer in return.
While serving in Kuwait in 1991, Maj. Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington) and his crew were supposedly ambushed by the enemy, leaving two American casualties and one Congressional Medal of Honor recipient in the form of Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber). But in the years to follow, dreams and surfacing memories about what really happened in Kuwait haunt Marco and those who served under him.
As Shaw campaigns for the seat of U.S. vice president, Marco uncovers evidence of brainwashing, implanted microchips and the possibility that Shaw is undeserving of his war hero status. All of this wrong-doing comes under the hand of Manchurian Global.
The conglomerate, a strategically convenient political contributor, propose creating privately owned combat units thereby profiting off the War on Terror -- quite a presence in the film. To accomplish this, it first needs a privately owned and operated United States president. Genetic reconfiguration is the company's answer to putting a sleeper in the White House.
"Over the larger course of history, there are key players and there are role players," says one Manchurian Global executive.
The twisted ending removes credibility from everything the film had just asserted. Rather than full exposition of the truth, people accusing Manchurian Global of sleazy behavior end up contributing to the deception and lies.
Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism
