Being Lemmy Kilmister: Performativity and Metal

This essay discusses how the late Lemmy Kilmister, the driving force behind Motörhead, is framed in the film Lemmy as a rock and metal star who has fully incorporated and embodied his stage persona. This conflation of on-stage and off-stage personas brings to the fore the inherent fiction of authenticity as it is commonly attached to rock and metal music. The film, alongside other iconographic objects that present alternative Lemmies, also undermines the essentialist notion of authentic rock personalities, thereby making visible the constructed nature of such performative identities.