From attraction to distraction: the Panoram machine and emerging modes of multi-sited screen consumption

Abstract

This article maps the dominant discourses that surrounded the circulation of the Panoram, a 1940s film jukebox by charting how this film-vending technology was ‘imagined’ or marketed in early trade and industrial accounts and its own films. The emergence of this novelty filmic-musical apparatus draws attention to new practices and spaces for film exhibition, evidencing various and at times conflicting modes of user engagements with new media technologies. As a vending machine, the Panoram initially was marketed for its features of automation and convenience. As a new entertainment technology, it moved away from its vending machine status and instead was framed as both a film and music machine, as something totally innovative in cinematic projection but also not so different from the more common musical jukebox. Through the blurring of traditional media categories of film and music, the Panoram's discourses and representations evidence a 1940s media culture acclimating to new screen presences in various public and commercial sites and presage the rise of television and subsequent ambient, moving image screens.