III

		the cultural exchange of daily life. To orchestrate the multitudinous possibilities of each product, each media company affiliate employs synergy managers "whose job it is to work out how their division can add value to others, and others to theirs." 7 Through this kind of saturation then, the big movie did not just increase its share of the market, it aimed at monopolizing it. As noted by Theodor Adorno, greedy expansion fits the logic of the capitalist enterprise, for its ultimate objective is "to handle, to manipulate, to absorb everything," leaving "[no]thing beyond itself untouched."8

		The new communication companies were certainly helped in their marketing expansion by the technological changes of the last twenty years. The introduction of the VCR and pay cable technologies, for instance, fattened the gross revenues of films to the point that, today, more money is made from these distribution circuits than from the theatrical box office alone. In economic terms, all of this meant that the old law of diminishing returns for a product, once postulated by Alfred Marshall and others, had finally been overruled.9 Although depending upon the success of a film in its initial theatrical release, the new markets could in fact generate exponential returns for its producers. Clearly, the economic tables have been dramatically turned around with only big movies and global marketing now capable of consistently delivering rich monetary rewards, a situation described by W. Brian Arthur as the law of increasing returns, "the tendency for that which is ahead to get further ahead, for that which loses advantage to lose further advantage."10

		IV

		The amount of attention and money involved in all these synergies required a radically new kind of product: the blockbuster. As Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook point out in their analysis of the new economic trend, there are only a few books on the New York Times best-sellers list.11 These are the books which will be reviewed in the press, these are the books which will be advertised and financially supported by the publishers, these are the books which people will hear and read about, see displayed in bookstores, and buy. Only so many books make it, the others don't. Each time a book manages its way into the charts, another is removed. To turn a profit at all, a book must make the list and stay there for a while. That is where the rewards are. The more copies that are sold,