ABSTRACT
There are two historical contexts to the development of film publicity that place it inside larger themes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first is the combination of applied science and capital to create new industries. The film industry was the economic consequence of such a combination when finance capital was added to the technical development of photography from still to moving pictures. Other combinations based on technical advances such as electricity, the internal combustion engine and chemical compounds occasioned the rise of industries that have marked off this century from others. Publicists and spinners are the shelf-fillers and dressers of the cultural and political superstore where simplicity, explicitness and emotion are piled up prominently and promoted over nuance, irony and the cerebral. They are the distribution agents at the diffusion point of the cultural and political product, pushing their wares to the largest numbers of film-goers and voters.
