Numerous references have been made during the course of previous chapters to the industrial practices and structures of Hollywood. As we have seen, the commercial and industrial nature of Hollywood has been viewed as responsible not just for the formulaic nature of its genres, but also for the existence of genres as such. Reference has been made to the activities of particular companies. And the role of Hollywood’s inter-textual relay, a relay which involves each of its industrial sectors, have been stressed throughout this book. The status of Hollywood as an industry and the status of its films as commodities have also been stressed in accounts of genre which seek to emphasize the importance of variety and difference as well as the importance of repetition (Belton 1994:62-3, 115-16; Neale 1980:52-3). These accounts underline the extent to which all industries in capitalist economies produce products for a market and, in the long term at least, for profit. Hollywood produces artistic products. Artistic products, unlike cars or tables, are ‘one-of-a-kind items’ (Belton 1994:63). ‘Henry Ford could manufacture thousands of cars exactly alike; here sameness was a virtue. But every movie had to be different; otherwise the movie audiences would not appear at the theatres again and again’ (Jacobs 1939:162). Thus in the film industry, as in many other industries, multiple copies are made of each item, but the items copied are all unique, all to a greater or lesser degree distinct one from another. The car industry and the table-manufacturing industry generate lines, models and fashions in order to open up new markets and in order to ensure a constant flow of demand. But the individual items within each range are as identical to one another as they can be made to be. In the film industry the items within as well as across different ranges have to be different. For Hollywood, genres provide a cost-effective equivalent to lines and ranges, producing a demand for similarities within the variety of product on offer and therefore minimizing the degrees of difference involved. Within and across the array of its output, Hollywood’s product is therefore always diverse-each of its films are always new, each of its genres always different from one another. But within its ranges and models, within its genres, its films are also always similar. Genres thus perform a number of economic functions. They enable the industry to meet the obligations of variety and difference inherent in its product. But they also enable it to manufacture its product in a cost-effective manner, and to regulate

demand and the nature of its output in such a way as to minimize the risks inherent in difference and to maximize the possibility of profit on its overall investment.