Benjamin has used this chapter to talk more about film and starts by discussing how the reflection of the actor is separated from the person and how that reflection can be copied and transported to in front of an audience. He then compares the performance being copied to items being made in a factory:

That market, which he is not entering merely with his labour but with his very presence, his entire physical being, is quite as intangible, so far as he is concerned at the time of the performance aimed at it, as is any article produced in a factory. (P21)

This removes the aura of the performance, the work of art, but the aura of the personality, the actor, is increased. This does seem to account for the strange phenomenon of the cult of celebrity, which especially follows actors and actresses.

But at the end of the chapter Benjamin then discusses the dwindling gap between the writer and the reader. He raises the point that because of the printing press, more people were able to write and publish and so the gap diminished. This was then further reduced when newspapers started printing correspondence from their readers and he says:

The distinction between writer and readership is thus in the process of loosing its fundamental character. The distinction is becoming a functional one, assuming a different form from one case to the next. The reader is constantly ready to become a writer. (P23)

He then compares this to film and it is easy to draw the comparison with photography. One aspect that I love about photography is that it is so democratic, that anyone can take a photograph. What Benjamin is saying is that the viewer becomes the photographer and I think the process works both ways, the photographer becomes the viewer. There does not need to be any gap or barrier between the two functions and that both are as accessible as the other.