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I, Corpenstein: Mythic, Metaphorical and Visual Renderings of the Corporate Form in Comics and Film

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Abstract

From US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s 1933 judgement in Louis K Liggett Co v Lee (and, before that, Mourice Wormster’s Frankenstein Incorporated) to Matt Wuerker’s satirical cartoon “Corpenstein”, the use of Frankenstein’s monster as a metaphor for the modern corporation has been a common practice. This paper seeks to unpack and extend explicitly this metaphorical register via a recent filmic and graphic interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein myth. Whilst Frankenstein has been read as an allegorical critique of rights—Victor Frankenstein’s creation of a monstrous body, reflecting the figurative construction of a body by rights discourse—the metaphoric notion of reanimating a ‘soulless corpse’ resonates with Edward’s Thurlow’s description of the corporation as having ‘no soul to damn’. By exploring the figurative and optical representations of this process of reanimating the body in Scott Beattie’s film I, Frankenstein and Kevin Grevioux’s companion graphic novel I, Frankenstein: Genesis, I would like to extend this metaphoric register, by examining the theological origin and nature of the corporate form. This theology is explicitly referenced in the film and graphic novel via the battle between Gargoyles and Demons, which dominates the plot and backstory. The role of Frankenstein’s monster—now called Adam—however, is about enabling the reanimation of thousands of corpses without souls for possession by the demon hoard headed by Prince Naberius, who in his alternative persona Charles Wessex, controls the Wessex Institute and Wessex Industries. This ‘corporate baron’ himself has devoted his ‘life’ to enabling the rediscovery of Frankenstein’s ability to reanimate the dead for the purposes of gaining immortality. This mythic framing, however, renders explicitly visible the nature and purpose of the corporate form itself—of capturing and reanimating life in a form of immortality via the mechanisms of perpetual succession. This visual rendering, of a metaphoric framing goes to show the way in which the optical nature of the dominant forms of popular culture—film, television, comic books—provide a means for seeing law’s metaphorical images and for thus unpacking, interrogating and rendering them anew. It argues for a shift from the image of the corporation as a monstrous body to one which involves relations of reciprocity, gratuitousness and gift.

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Notes

  1. We can also, of course, point to the specifically ocular metaphors attached to the adage that ‘justice is blind’ and the representations of the blindfold in relation to Justitia [35].

  2. Justice Denning, himself, is drawing on a line of legal rhetoric that makes this organological analogy. See, for example, Sir James Smith’s case where it was said that a corporation is: ‘[an] artificial entity composed of divers constituent members like the human body, and that the ligaments of this body politic or artificial body are the franchises and liberties thereof which bind and unite all its members together, and the whole frame and essence of the corporation consists therein’ [83].

  3. Gabaldon’s feminist critique of limited liability describes it as a ‘morality play’ between a ‘hapless public, completely unaware that the smiling individual handing out cups of lemonade is not personally and completely [liable] for the contents of those cups’ and Dr Frankenstein. She explains this ‘Frankenstein view’ as follows: ‘irresponsible corporate impresarios regularly dispatch inhuman corporate entities to roam the countryside in search of profits. Lacking both conscience and capital, these entities will inflict injuries for which they cannot, and their heedless investors need not, pay. In an uncharitable, but not necessarily unrealistic, permutation, the corporate scientist quite deliberately may design the creature to generate short-run gains for the creator, while surreptitiously imposing tremendous costs on third parties’ [31: 1392]. In contrast to this view, she notes that the later decades of the twentieth century focused on ‘a succession of extremely non-anthropomorphic cost–benefit analyses’ which ‘lulled these vivid images into slumber’—though they are once again on the rise [31: 1392].

  4. Foster also notes the ‘recurrent comparison to Frankenstein’s monster, a thing which has been given life and which escapes the control of its creator. The Frankenstein story is itself revealing, for there was, on the surface, no reason why Mary Shelley should have made Frankenstein’s creation a monster which became a vicious murderer. But it fits well with our fear of an unknown being, stronger than its creators, uncontrollable and potentially evil because it is not subject to the civilizing influences of normal human society.’ [28: 300]. See also the summary of this metaphor as a ‘script and schema’ of corporate law and corporate theory by Chen and Hanson: ‘Various groups, books, articles, and even movies have promoted and continue to promote to this day the alternative schema, which, at the extreme, likens corporations to an experiment gone horribly awry, a man-made Frankenstein loose on the landscape destroying everything in its path. Drawing upon that metaphor, the script primes us to be concerned about the possibility that big business, which has been created by humans, is now beyond our control, and even controls us.’[14: 134–502] They provide the documentary The Corporation as an example of this script.

  5. McCutcheon goes on to note that ‘the popular cultural image of Frankenstein’s monster—devoid of feeling, dubiously sentient, and single-mindedly destructive—has contemporary postcolonial significance as an ‘amoral immortal’ figure of the transnational corporation.’ [58: 738].

  6. Thoennes even argues that, like Doctor Frankenstein’s refusal to create a companion to the monster and his sacrificing of himself in attempting to destroy it, it ‘[i]t is now the responsibility of each state and its citizens to take measures to regain power over these legal monstrosities in an effort to prevent further degradation of individual rights and freedoms’ [85: 236].

  7. Justice Brandeis’ dissenting judgement is termed explicitly in this fashion, deeming the people of Florida still had some ability to determine their fate and fend off market dominance by corporate-run chain-stores. See [46: 496–502].

  8. Chen and Hanson do note, however, that the ‘Frankenstein metaphorical schema’ is flexible and that an alternative narrative or ‘counter-script’ drawing on the same metaphor, transforms ‘the Frankenstein into a misunderstood monster for which our fears were unfounded. The Frankenstein was not, as the critics suggested, a monster devoid of humanity, but was, rather a “person” with a “soul”—sensitive and compassionate’ [14: 134–502, 56].

  9. Such a trope is a regular feature of science-fiction narratives [78, 89].

  10. As Barkan notes, this is thus a genealogical rather than simply metaphoric comparison, arguing that there is a political theology that ‘underlies modern biopolitical regimes, including those associated with corporations and the corporate capitalist economy.’ [6: 8]. Joel Bakan also makes a number of comparisons between the corporation as today’s dominant institution and the church (or monarchy) of the past [4: 5, 134 and 139].

  11. Kantorowicz makes reference to Henri de Lubac here who focuses specifically on the concepts of the corpus mysticum. Note, however, as Jennifer Rust points out, that whilst Kantorowicz depicts a one-way trajectory, de Lubac argues that there are multiple concepts (including both the Eucharistic and sociological) operating together and does not privilege one over the other [47]. Rust also argues that this trajectory in Kantorowicz is, in part, an aspect of his response to Schmitt’s Political Theology [72].

  12. For detailed analysis of Hobbes’ Frontispiece see [36: 89–124, 2].

  13. In the film, Adam’s immortality is implied, but it is made explicit in I, Frankenstein: Genesis.

  14. Kantorowicz notes that the Decretal itself focused specifically on the issue of the punishment of the entirety of the members of the corporation and Innocent IV’s claim that corporations cannot be held guilty (a point which, as a number of commentators emphasise, applied to excommunication and not necessarily other corporate crimes). However, in Innocent’s later commentary, he takes up the issue of the punishment of individuals over time [43: 305–307, 23: 34–36, 71: 297–298].

  15. In the viewer’s first introduction to Wessex in the film, he interrupts Terra Wade’s monologue about the nature of life by saying ‘Time is Fleeting, Dr Wade. Please do not waste mine.’ Given both Naberius’ desire for the (apparently) immortal body of Frankenstein’s monster, and the fact that Naberius has inhabited Wessex’s body since the twelfth century, this is a rather ironic comment.

  16. See also Joshua Barkan’s consideration of the corporation in the context of Esposito’s work [5].

  17. She goes on to note that ‘Capitalism itself can meaningfully be understood as a profoundly gendered value system within which the gendered corporate form and its interests are accorded inevitable priority’[38: 44].

  18. Grear goes on to note that ‘the corporation exemplifies, par excellence, the ideological presuppositions of liberal legal personality, which, in combination with the disembodiment associated with legal rationalism, means that the corporation enjoys a distinctive structural advantage over human beings in the construction of the legal subject’[37: 524]. See also the work of Saru M. Matambanadzo which argues for a specifically embodied theory of the corporation, drawing on and extending the metaphoric comparison with the human body [57].

  19. Travis takes-up this theme of embodiment and the nature of legal personality and reads it in relation to the figure of the ‘zombie’ in The Walking Dead [88]. There he argues not so much for a simply embodied account of the legal person (following Grear or Naffine), but rather, drawing on the analysis of Roberto Esposito, for an abolishing of personality altogether, tying rights then to the ‘human’ and not the ‘person’. Whilst I am sympathetic to such arguments, and there is much to be said for thinking the corporate body in relation to the impersonal, my focus here is on examining the way in which personality operates in relation to an image of the corporate body. Joshua Barkan has also examined Esposito’s work in relation to the liberalism and the dispositif of the corporate person [5].

  20. In the concluding words from Victor to Walton, where he asks Walton to kill the monster if he should appear after Victor’s death, he describes the monster as such: ‘He is eloquent and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my heart; but trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like malice.’ [79: Chap. 24]. The monster also refers to himself as having a soul. For example, ‘Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?’ [79: Chap. 10].

  21. Barkan notes that this aspect of corporations in relation to police power and the public welfare continued, even with the shift in understandings of corporations as property and personhood [6: Chaps. 2 and 3].

  22. Michael Asimow has examined similar issues in relation to the cinematic representations of big law firms (and big business more generally) [3].

  23. Marchand notes that corporations were considered soulless because of their self-interest and lack of conscience, but also because of an aloofness due to the scale and bureaucracy of the large corporation. This resulted in the sense of a lack of personality and being considered only a ‘thing’. The concern for developing soulfulness was therefore about a social legitimacy and creating of a corporate spirit. Actions taken to develop this included a focus on concerns of employees and the creation of a public persona or personality for the corporation. This also involved a focus on the buildings inhabited by the corporations and the skyscrapers of Manhattan referred to as the ‘cathedrals of commerce’ [56: 8, 15–47].

  24. Though, it should be acknowledged, that the basis for Berle and Friedman’s claims were different. See the discussion by Barkan [6: 115–120].

  25. In outlining her arguments for virtue ethics applied to the corporate sector, she notes that the Aristotelian framework, designed to apply to individuals, requires a soul. She makes the point that the question of whether corporate entities have a soul need to be examined on a case by case basis, but at the same time argues that corporations should be treated as individuals within an Aristotelian schema (rather than as the polis or a small community or association). The reason for this is that, as a polis, the corporation would not be seen to be in a reciprocal relationship with employees, customers and suppliers and the focus is on what individuals put in, rather than what the polis puts out. At the same time, for Aristotle an association or community must be formed for some good purposes. As Wheeler notes, this has resonances with the concession theory of the corporation, but is harder to sustain based on general incorporation laws. As such, she approaches corporations as individuals [95: 71–76]. A range of the reform arguments, and the concerns around corporations as Frankenstein monsters, tend to grieve the loss of the formation of the corporation in terms of the public good [4]. Corporate legal scholars operating from a Catholic Christian perspective, amongst others, do still articulate the corporate form in relation to an Aristotelian (influenced by Aquinas) public good. See, for example, the work of Susan Stabile [84]. Though there are both communitarian and libertarian applications of this [64, 74].

  26. In I, Frankenstein: Genesis, it is revealed that this is not the first time that Adam had fallen in love. After early interactions with the gargoyles who despised him as a monster and not human, he searched for ways to prove his humanity. He befriends and then grows close to a blind woman in the woods. However, it is discovered that the woman is in fact a gargoyle in disguise trying to show that the demons will never cease hunting Adam and that he needs to leave humanity alone. One of the gargoyles then taunts him arguing that if he truly had a soul, he would not have risked the life of his beloved.

  27. Tara Mulqueen has examined the co-operative movement in relation specifically to the issue of sociality and the challenges of co-operatives being defined in relation to business and other corporate forms, thus losing aspects of their social and political form. She argues that ‘moving forward requires re-evaluating our understanding of co-operatives, to see them not as businesses but as alternative forms of association which have the potential to open our thinking about the very organization of the economy, and to merge the economic, the political and the social’ [68: 54].

  28. It is important to note that there are, however, different interpretations of the Catholic Social Teaching as it applies to corporations and corporate governance, and also different applications of Benedict’s extension of this tradition [64, 74].

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the participants in the ‘Seeing Law’ symposium for their invaluable feedback and input, and for Associate Professor Kieran Tranter for inviting me to be a part of it. This research was supported by a Socio-Legal Research Centre, Griffith University Research Support Scheme Grant (now the Law Futures Centre). I also thank Thomas Stubbings for his research assistance, the anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong for their hospitality whilst writing this piece. All errors, monstrous or otherwise, remain my own.

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  1. USC Law School, Faculty of Arts, Business and Law, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, Australia

    Timothy D. Peters

  2. Law Futures Centre, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

    Timothy D. Peters

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Correspondence to Timothy D. Peters.

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Peters, T.D. I, Corpenstein: Mythic, Metaphorical and Visual Renderings of the Corporate Form in Comics and Film. Int J Semiot Law 30, 427–454 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-017-9520-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-017-9520-2

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