Peer-reviewed article
High-school stories and semiotic bodies: autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) in the cultural field
Madeleine Wood ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This article is a cultural and media studies analysis of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos. It draws on Freud, Winnicott, Hall and Kristeva to look at ASMR as a phenomenon, a form of representation and a kind of performance. It focuses on the 'high-school' subgenre, with themed videos such as the 'toxic best friend' and the 'girl who is obsessed with you'. It argues that these videos portray adolescent experience as sensory, sensual and intimate, and that they present feminine bodies in ways that produce a 'killjoy' queering. The abstract does not address children's well-being, rights or any intervention.
Key points
- ASMR is examined as a phenomenon, a representational form and a modality of performance.
- In the high-school subgenre, affect and storytelling are interlaced, and the ASMRtist acts as actor and performer.
- Themed videos such as the 'toxic best friend' and the 'girl who is obsessed with you' (re)inscribe sensuality on feminine bodies.
- The subgenre creates a reiterative scene in which adolescent experience is traced on the body as sensory, sensual and intimate.
Limitations
The abstract describes a theoretical, close-reading analysis of media content. It reports no data on children or young people, no outcomes for them and no country context, so it cannot tell us anything about their well-being.
Abstract
Abstract In dialogue with Sigmund Freud, D. W. Winnicott, Stuart Hall and Julia Kristeva, this article examines ASMR as phenomena, representational form and modality of performance. Through a close analysis of the high-school subgenre, it is argued that affect and storytelling are interlaced, re-presenting the ASMRtist as actor and performer, and demonstrating the interdependence of semiotic and symbolic dimensions of content. Themed videos presenting the ‘toxic best friend’ and the ‘girl who is obsessed with you’ (re)inscribe sensuality on feminine bodies, producing a form of ‘killjoy’ queering irreducible to a specific sexual identity. The subgenre creates a reiterative scene in which adolescent experience is traced on the body as sensory, sensual, and intimate.