Danny MacAskill and the visuality of the extreme

This article offers a visual analysis of online videos that feature innovative street trials cyclist Danny MacAskill. While MacAskill tends to be defined exclusively as an extreme athlete, this article instead considers his popular online videos as acts of poesies that make visible the theme of flourishing in the midst of uncertainty. Drawing on and contributing to extreme sports studies as well as recent social theory on precariousness, the article notes the understudied meaning making potential of extreme sports performances, which navigate the peril that characterizes contemporary existence through risk and play. I argue that MacAskill’s videos deserve greater attention because he provides a counterexample to the kinds of hypermasculine extreme sports performances that have historically been studied. Ultimately, the article considers how analysing MacAskill’s videos can begin to redirect critical understandings of the relationship between cultural production, gender performance and extreme sports.