Again this is another really short chapter, is only a paragraph long.

He carries on from the previous chapter talking about film but he does make an important observation:

The audience empathises with the performer only by empathising with the camera. It thus assumes the camera’s stance: it tests. This is not a stance which cultic value can be judged. (P18)

I think of what he is trying to say is that because an actor is recorded on a camera and then the viewer sees the recording, it then becomes a case that it is a copy of the performance. Because it is a copy it is once removed from the original and that the viewer can only relate to the actor through the recording, instead of experiencing it for real.

This then moves into the realms of inference. By watching a performance from a recording we have to infer the meaning of the actions of the actor. It is because of this distance between the original and the viewer and that another medium is used, the originality is lost and the cultic value is also gone. To use a previous example, can you imagine a film being worshiped, having enough religious significance that it becomes a relic?