ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some time setting out that precautionary ethos, and its relationship to objects of everyday risk. It explores the important lines of continuity and change that characterized its evolution. The chapter offers some detailed analysis of skits in the earlier iterations that serve to underline that fact. If all of Jackass’s skits are in a sense ‘risk assemblages’ those that feature multiple performers represent carefully signified acts of ‘collaborative edgework’. The notion that post-9/11 developments have merely amplified rather than instigated a sense of the ‘riskiness of everything’ is apparent across the spectrum of commentary. The growth of extreme sports documentaries, enjoyed by millions who would never dream of zipping up a wing suit or skiing off a cliff, is a clear example of the burgeoning appeal of vicarious performances of corporeal risk-taking. In Sean Afnan Morrissey’s analysis mimetic and carnivalesque risk are treated as distinct spheres of activity, undertaken by different cohorts of people.
