Rating: 1/2
by Derek Smith 10/20/06

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Edited from a 5-day seminar for business executives to a meaty 45-minute film, Harud Farocki’s Indoctrination explores the merger of psychology and capitalism, specifically in it’s shaping of rhetoric and its effects on the individual.  What begins seemingly as a method to improve sales and subtly manipulate potential customers or clients eventually becomes a workshop for self-transformation.  The basics of this may seem a bit obvious 19 years after the film’s release, but the techniques for shaping verbal and body language are only part of the path to the greater goal of creating the ideal capitalist.  At one point in the film, the lecturer corrects one of his pupils saying, “It doesn’t matter what you think.  It matters how you appear to others.”  This line clearly illustrates the main point Farocki attempts to convey – capitalism not only demands that individuals change the way they relate to one another, they must change the way they think of themselves.  The group spends their time developing the exterior, molding the surface, which over time helps them become selling machines.

In order for this change to remain effective in the long-term, it must occur from the outside in, changing only behavior exhibited externally (physically and verbally) similar to the way soldiers are trained for battle.  By critiquing tapes of their presentations to the class, the student’s workshop to help mold one another so they can conform to the ideal business model.  "Model" being a key word here because it is a matter of performance and illusion in service of the good of corporations.  Farocki intelligently keeps any exterior voice or criticism from invading the film, simply observing the class and focusing intently on the methodology of the instructor as well as the executives all of whom seem very aware of the essential nature of this change.  At one point they even discuss past strategies they’ve found useful in the past such as dressing one step above your current income while driving a car that’s one step below.  When one man expresses concern about going so far as to consider the car you drive, the overwhelming concencus is that the uniform efficiency they’re aiming for cannot be attained through only 9-5 changes.  These sacrifices are not simply “for work”, but extend to their daily personal lives.  The films concentration on the seminar's push for redefining the individual within the capitalist system suggests the inevitable and frightening result to come - where human beings become indistinguishable from commodities.  Selling one's image, and literally oneself, has become an increasingly necessary biproduct of modern capitalism and seeing the early stages of its development (and the executives remaining so committed  to it, completely unaware of any negative consequences) is absolutely fascinating.  Indoctrination may not be a flashy, audience-friendly or cloying documentary like many we see today, but nearly twenty years later, it remains a vital documentation of the loss of individuality in the face of unbridled corporate control.