Disappointment is coming: rules of engagement in Bill Drummond’s rock memoirs and HBO’s Game of Thrones

1 Introduction

Discussing early Russian cinema, Yuri Tsivian (2010) mentions the film Kino-Eye (1924). In this film, a shot of a perfectly normal street with pedestrians, trams, and cars is followed, jarringly, by a shot of the same street rotated 90 degrees: a cinematographic example of what the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky called ostranenye, i.e. representing things in an estranged, uncommon way, thereby upsetting our expectations. In this respect, all art can be regarded as having the potential to shock. Whether it is a pop song suddenly bursting into a soaring bridge after several repeats of verse and chorus, or a billboard scandalizing unsuspicious passers-by with a sexually explicit Andreas Serrano photograph: the shock they offer comes from the sudden – mildly surprising, or harshly felt – confrontation with the unexpected.^[1]

Another example: imagine opening a poetry collection by Dutch author Abdelkader Benali, and finding, on the face of it, a set of sonnets. On closer inspection, however, these poems lack many characteristics – such as rhyme and iambic pentameter – that one would normally expect of such poems (Benali 2003). One may be pleased by this discovery – having, as many readers of contemporary poetry, little interest in technically flawless sonnets. One may also, however, be annoyed: having opened the book – which has a strikingly uncontemporary, fin de siècle design, possibly setting up the reader for something rather old-fashioned – one may have prepared oneself for a set of pleasant, inoffensively traditional poems, which is certainly not what is being offered. This, in turn, may leave one feeling disappointed.

Thus, contemporary artists – filmmakers, pop musicians, photographers, poets, etc. – have a fine line to tread: their audiences expect the unexpected, in some cases even expect to be shocked or scandalized. By trying to meet this expectation, however, the artist may also end up merely disappointing their audience. To further complicate things, the artist may also try to disappoint their audience on purpose, in order to disrupt established expectations. That, for instance, would be one way of interpreting John Cage’s infamous 4′33”: the shock and outrage caused by its initial performance is the result of the artist’s deliberate choice to disappoint the expectation that when a piano player sits down in a concert hall, music will follow.^[2] By becoming acquainted with artforms, genres, an artist or specific work, and cultural norms in general, audiences may “learn” to expect its typical way of offering the unexpected, and thereby not be disappointed but, instead, thrilled, entertained, enriched, or challenged, and so forth. In order to facilitate this, artists may actively seek to shape the expectations of their audiences. They can do so through their artworks, but also, for instance, through presenting themselves in certain ways – as provocateurs, aesthetes, engaged artists – by formulating an artistic program, or by presenting their work as belonging to a certain genre. Based on this and other social, cultural, and artistic norms, audiences, on their side, may come to form certain expectations that they then use to make sense of an artwork’s specific way of being different. We will discuss this push and pull between makers and audiences below as the rules of engagement around artworks and cultural products, and argue that it is breaking such, often implicit, rules that causes disappointment.

Feelings of disappointment on the side of an audience, whether deliberately triggered or caused by the artist somehow failing to live up to certain expectations, will run especially high in the context of fan engagement with popular culture. The strong, affective relationship that fans built with, say, a pop musician or a television show (Burgess and Jones 2023), and the large amounts of time and effort they invest in that relationship (Jenkins 2012: 2) can greatly exacerbate feelings of being let down, sometimes even turning fandom into “anti-fandom” (Williams and Bennett 2022: 1036). Here, instead of admiration, feelings of dislike, or even hate, become the driving force behind fan engagement. Such backlash is the flipside of the economic and promotional potential of fan engagement that often leads content producers to seek it out in the first place (Coppa 2014: 80).

After discussing the concept of rules of engagement, we assess two examples of such fan disappointment and the sense of shock or scandal they may instigate. Our first example, Bill Drummond, was one half of the KLF, a British rave duo from the early 1990s that famously exited the music industry in 1992 by shooting blanks from an automatic rifle at the audience of the BRIT Awards and burning £1 million. We will here discuss his memoirs, in which he emplots, with relish, his life into a narrative that goes from the dizzying heights of being a chart-topping pop phenomenon to disappointing his fans with flimsy comebacks designed to fail. While in Drummond’s case, we can see how he teases out fan engagement to then deliberately disappoint, in our second example, the HBO television series Game of Thrones, the strong fan disappointment in its eighth season and its finale was certainly not sought on purpose. Rather, it was the unintentional outcome of the show’s nurturing of a massive fanbase that resulted in a strong aesthetic and value-driven investment in the show’s narrative among fans. We focus on the narrative work – the creation, communication, and interpretation of narratives (Gubrium and Holstein 2009: xvii) – involved, addressing the question: what narratives surround fan disappointment in popular culture, on the side of the maker (in the case of Drummond); and in fan responses (in the case of Game of Thrones)? We analyze how these narratives function as attempts to shape certain rules of engagement, either to prevent – or in the strange case of Bill Drummond, deliberately cause – disappointment; or, if disappointment has already happened, to express how those rules have been transgressed.

2 Rules of engagement

What all examples discussed above show is that something more is at play than authorial intention and audience expectation when an artwork disappoints. There is, of course, the context: in its original form, 4′33” could only disappoint in 1952, not in 2025. More specifically, however, disappointment seems to come about through an important aspect of that context, namely the interplay between sender and receiver in which it is established what the former will deliver and what the latter may expect. Writing about theatrical events such as pageants, festivals, and performances, Hodsdon et al. (2025) have discussed how interactions between performers and spectators are governed by implicit and explicit rules of engagement. These are the “unstated patterns in communication” (Collett 2007: 18; cf. Goffman 2022 [1959]) that stipulate the “positionality” of those involved and enable them to “act accordingly” (Hodsdon et al. 2025: 173). Often, such “‘rules’ of where and how to engage” are not clear-cut (Hodsdon et al. 2025: 161), but need to be negotiated in a (sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce) push and pull between those involved, as each party may have a different view of what “behaviours and expectations of individuals” can be considered reasonable in a given setting (Collett 2007: 19).

The notion of rules of engagement and the push and pull through which they are established can be extended to fan engagement. Authorial ethos, genre conventions, conceptions of what makes good television or pop music, habitus, and value regimes (cf. Korthals Altes 2014) may all be at play in shaping such rules of engagement for the interaction between content producers and fan communities (cf. Jenkins 2012). When fans feel that makers do not keep their part of the resulting “deal,” the original adoration that instigated their investment in a television show or pop idol may take “the form of disappointment, anger, and indignation” (Goodman 2015: 662). This may be because both parties assumed different rules of engagement (Collett 2007: 19). However, disappointment may also happen when both parties more or less subscribe to the same rules of engagement, but the audience feels the makers simply did not deliver what could be expected of them according to these rules. Or, once again, the makers may deliberately decide to thwart the rules, simply because they think it will result in something good or interesting.

Roughly speaking, we argue that the rules of engagement may be broken down into three types of exchange between makers and audiences: (1) financial, (2) contractual, and (3) aesthetic. Each of these has its own burdens and rewards for both content producers and fans. The most obvious exchange is a financial one. The parameters that govern this exchange are perhaps the most straightforward. The producers of a television show broadcast on a streaming platform, for instance, will invest in its production, and the audience will pay to watch it. This is also where the “incitement and recruitment of fan practices” is a logical move by content producers (Stanfill 2019: 6). It allows the show to capitalize on its fanbase by earning money not just from subscriptions and advertisements, but from merchandise and spin-offs. By doing so, however, the creators also accept a set of rules of engagement in which fans “are increasingly powerful” (Stanfill 2019: 4): in return, the audience will not only expect certain paratextual content – interviews, extras, fan service, teasers, that is “rewards” for being a fan – but also, as we will see, certain textual content.

The second type of exchange between makers and audiences is called contractual to stress that rules of engagement are assumed to be more or less binding by makers and, especially, audiences. The “contract” between, for example, a pop musician and their fans, establishes what the artist will provide and how the audience will consume it. Say, for instance, every two year or so, the musician will deliver an album, and the audience will listen to it and take it seriously as the next instalment in the artist’s oeuvre. The artist will strive to meet the audience’s expectations – they will try to be good, that is. The audience, in turn, will strive to be satisfied – will listen generously.

Third is the aesthetic exchange between makers and audiences. Makers will, by presenting themselves and their work as fitting certain genres, try to ensure success: their audience will know what to expect and are therefore more likely to receive what is offered favorably. The pop musician who has previously established an ethos of authenticity will not “sell out”; the hitmaker previously lauded for producing chart-topping bangers will not start producing introspective, navel-gazing, lo-fi rock songs. Of course, it is not as straightforward as that. Artists may, as said before, deliberately seek to violate previously established conventions and expectations. The pop musician shifting from guitar-driven, heart-felt balladry to electronic beep-beep-oink noodling may, in the process, establish an ethos of crossover credibility, and their fanbase may, at that point, be loyal enough to extend their generosity to accommodate such a drastic shift. This does not happen on its own, but will be the outcome of the aforementioned push and pull between the artist (establishing, for instance, in promotional interviews a narrative of growth in which the new material is the result of a deeply felt need to do something different, or really is the logical step in their growth as an artist) and their fans trying to make sense of their idol’s new direction (recognizing and embracing, for instance, the narrative of artistic growth, possibly also foregrounding how a true fan should accept such changes). In this push and pull – in which other stakeholders, like record companies and professional critics, will also be actively involved – new rules of engagement may be established. However, even successful examples, like Beyoncé doing country or Dylan going electric, show that in the process friction may still be strong, emotions may run high, and disappointment may be felt heavily.

In any case, a television show or pop artist will follow certain parameters – will establish and adhere to certain codes. These codes commit their output to a certain type of content, style, and mode, and while they may seek to explore the limits of these codes, they seldom fully abandon them. In one of the examples we will discuss below, Game of Thrones, we have a storyworld with prophecies and dragons, characters who are complex and motivated, plotlines that are suspenseful and moving toward a resolution, and a presentation that employs foreshadowing and represents a limited number of points of view. Once these codes are established, the audience will respond to and interpret the story according to them – will not complain that dragons aren’t real or that suspense is unpleasant. Conversely, however, if the makers – if only in the experience of their fans – diverge from these codes, disappointment can be grave. As Goodman has pointed out, fans of television shows tend to place great value on “the coherence of the fictional universe while downplaying the authority of the text” and if the latter is seen as not upholding that coherence, the makers will be perceived as “a failure and a disappointment” (Goodman 2015: 663).

A final aspect of the rules of engagement that is important to consider when discussing scandalized disappointment is that at some point, amidst the exchanges, contracts, and codes, an ethical obligation arises. Then, if there is a “mismatch” between what fans expect and what they receive, they may perceive this “to be a moral violation and transgression” (Burgess and Jones 2023: 1275). Now, the rules of engagement not only are, but should be followed. The parameters should be kept in place. A television show should not charge a viewer an extra hundred dollars to watch the last episode, for example. The fan should not start expecting two albums per year when their idol’s output has steadily been an album every two years. A show should not introduce sitcom characters or contemporary technologies into an established fantasy world, and the audience should not complain when they are not there. In setting up such conventions and adhering to them, and in asking audiences to respond according to these conventions, makers make an implicit promise.

Note that this promise pertains not to external rules, but to the rules of engagement established between a specific maker or group of makers and their specific audience. To return to the example discussed earlier, when Abdelkader Benali presents his poetry collection as a set of sonnets, he is not bound by historical rules for sonnets, but he is bound by his authorial ethos of postmodern, genre-bending writer who relishes the pure joy of exploring literary forms; or, within the work itself, by the expectations he sets as the collection progresses, so that the reader has the right to be disappointed when, halfway through, the collection might start including stale, historicizing, traditional sonnets. And while for this somewhat lesser-known Dutch author, the backlash if he were to not keep his side of the bargain would be limited, in the case of large international fandoms, the “emotional attachment” of fans may be so strong that such disappointment can indeed take the form of moral indignation, and result in “attributing blame and taking part in value deconstruction behaviors such as boycotts, protests and spreading negative word-of-mouth” (Burgess and Jones 2023: 1275). The rules of engagement may be up for negotiation and push and pull, but when audiences perceive that they are being completely ignored or deliberately trespassed, they will feel deceived or manipulated – and respond accordingly. This is precisely what Bill Drummond is trying to tap into by setting himself up as a disappointing failure to his fans, and what the producers of Game of Thrones found themselves facing unintentionally.

3 Disappointment is gonna rock you

In the remainder of this paper, we will discuss two examples of transgressions through artists and television shows, leading to scandal in the form of extreme fan disappointment. First, Bill Drummond, who gained fame for being together with Jimmy Cauty the KLF, also known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, furthermore known as the Timelords, a British duo that had a string of massive international hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1991, they were the biggest singles selling band worldwide, and to this day, their battle cry – “KLF is gonna rock you!” – remains a sonic madeleine to people who frequented discotheques or listened to pop music radio in the early 1990s. All this is a remarkable accomplishment given the fact that they were not signed to any record label, operating fully independently from a squat in central London. This also put them in the position to, when they tired of being a pop band, completely withdraw from the music industry and delete their back catalogue, an act that cost them up to £5 million in future earnings.

As argued above, makers sometimes deliberately decide to transgress rules of engagement – including those they originally helped establish – simply because they think it will result in something good or interesting. This seems to be the case for Bill Drummond. Below, we will first discuss two memoirs by Drummond, 45, published in 2000, and 17, published in 2007. In both texts, disappointment plays an important role, as we read about Drummond’s constant attempts to not live up to the expectations of people who admire him for having been in the KLF in general, and of his fans in particular. Interestingly enough, after all the money burning and shooting of blanks at an audience of celebrities and industry figures, the shock Drummond now has to offer his fans is that he is no longer scandalous – which implies the quite humorous paradox of potentially being scandalized by the fact that there is no scandal. We argue that Drummond’s musings about this, and his deliberate attempts to transgress established norms and values for how a former rockstar should behave, serve to replace the established rules of engagement – in which he should aim to please and reward his fans for their continued loyalty and interest – with new ones. This enables him to do two things. Firstly, by disappointing his fans, Drummond escapes the fate of the typical rockstar past his prime who is pathetically attempting to hold on to fading fame. Secondly, by disappointing his fans, Drummond gives them a myth more interesting than anything he could really offer them.

We then turn to Game of Thrones. By the time the television series had reached its season eight finale, it had become one of the most successful television series in history. Gaining and maintaining a worldwide, multi-million viewership throughout its entire run, it set a number of records for the most-watched show on a subscription service. Accompanied by podcasts, video games, and merchandise, and based on a widely popular series of high fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin that were also adapted into comic books, the show is part of a multi-platform franchise that maintains a dominant position within contemporary popular culture. Building upon the fan base of the already widely popular books, the series could count on a large, international fan community that, in a 2012 article in Vulture magazine, was called the “most devoted” in popular culture (Adalian et al. 2012). The stakes, in other words, for the final season and the series finale, were high, especially given the fact that the television series, by that time, was ahead of the book series it was originally based upon. We will consider both the narrative of the final season itself and reviews and fan responses to this narrative.

Despite the obvious differences between our case studies, by discussing them together, we assess the push and pull over rules of engagement between makers and audiences. How do each strive to establish and uphold – or in the case of Drummond, deliberately transgress – these rules, and what are the burdens and rewards involved for both parties? We will look at this from the side of the maker in the case of Bill Drummond, to see how he deals with the strong attachment and engagement of fans after having become famous, mining these as potential fuel for shock and scandal. We then, with our discussion of the final season of Game of Thrones, turn to the other side and see how fans feel that their investment in the object of their adoration brings with it certain obligations for the makers, and how, when such expectations are disappointed, this can lead to scandalized indignation.

4 Concluding remarks

There is a remarkable video on YouTube in which Bill Drummond and his former KLF partner Jimmy Cauty are defacing a car with white paint during their 2017 comeback. The car is a lovingly reproduced copy of Ford Timelord, a mascot of the KLF that featured in many of their music videos and is a central part of the lore surrounding the duo. At one point, the car’s owner turns up saying “no thanks,” but the duo continue nonetheless, until the visibly disappointed fan manages to get in the car and drive away, with Drummond throwing his paint brush after him (Jahski 2018). This video can be seen as emblematic for the push and pull over the rules of engagement between fans and makers that we discussed in this paper. It makes tangible how, ultimately, this push and pull is a struggle for authority. At stake is not only who can establish such rules, but especially also who can enforce them when they are transgressed.

Through our two examples, the first rather idiosyncratic, the second arguably less so, we explored this struggle between makers and audiences and the shock and scandal that may ensue when it takes on unexpected – and unexpectedly disappointing – forms. Drummond upsetting stereotypes of the aging rockstar and the rock memoir shows how an authorial posture, as presented through life writing, can offer an interpretative frame for, rather than narrate, an artist’s life and work. The way in which he does this shows how an authorial ethos may be both shaped by and aimed at shaping fans’ expected disappointment with their heroes’ life beyond the high points of their career. What is idiosyncratic in Drummond’s case is that he tries to feed off this disappointment, rather than attempting to avoid it, seeking to shock not through chasing meditatized scandal, but instead by refraining from being scandalous.

Like the makers of Game of Thrones, Drummond, throughout his career, was successful in instigating a high degree of engagement from his fans. One of the main ways in which he managed this was by teasing out forensic fandom, something he plays off of in his memoirs by deliberately undernarrating the parts of his life and career that people are most interested in and that are already overnarrated by others. He then makes fun of this strong engagement by deliberately disappointing his fans. Arguably, in his memoirs he also seems to be addressing a reader, a “true fan”, one might say, who understands Drummond’s knowing wink and will not make the mistake of being disappointed when he puts up another deliberately failed comeback – but instead will cheer him on while he disappoints others. Thus, these memoirs offer an interesting case of a famous artist setting out the rules of engagement for his fans.

This raises an issue that is also pertinent to Game of Thrones. How long, one may ask, does it take for rules of engagement to become established? To return to one of the examples mentioned in our introduction, nowadays concert goers fully expect the piano player to remain silent for 4 min and 33 s when John Cage’s 4′33” is to be performed (one could argue that the only way in which to emulate the shock and outrage of the original performance, would probably be to play, say, a late Romantic piece while announcing it to be 4′33”). In a television series, in a film, in a novel – how many instances does it take before certain conventions are established or certain rules appear? Furthermore, how do the responses or interpretations of the general audience and true fans differ? One could argue that the true fan is merely a more intense or engaged version of a casual viewer, and therefore more acutely aware of and invested in the rules of engagement. This would explain the strong feelings of disappointment we saw among fans: the disillusionment Drummond saw in the eyes of his number one fan, and the outrage among the Game of Thrones fanbase seem to stem from a deep sense of betrayal upon realizing that the rules of engagement were being transgressed.

However, the question then becomes why a true fan does not accept uncritically whatever they are offered. Why, in other words, is one type of transgression cheered on while another is not? This, too, becomes tangible in the YouTube video mentioned above, underneath which fans discuss what is going on. Some are scandalized, finding it “quite nasty and vindictive of them to act that way to a fan,” or saying that “to vandalise a fans [sic] car built with love, thats [sic] a dick move.” Others, instead, find this a “[v]ery KLF thing to do, let’s face it” and point out that the rules of engagement for the event made it quite clear such idolizing would not be tolerated (jahski 2018). In other words, if you are disappointed or shocked by this, you were clearly not a true fan.^[4]

In his memoirs, too, it is interesting how Drummond critiques fans fawning over every move he makes, but in the process creates a kind of superfan, who acknowledges this and does not behave in this way. Consider the contrast with the more casual audience. The casual viewer is far less easily disappointed and may remain entertained even if a television show does not fully deliver on its promise. Or, they may shrug off their disappointment more easily – who, apart from a hardcore fanbase, still cares whether Bill Drummond’s latest comeback was terrible? Fans, it seems, because of being engaged more actively, are also more easily scandalized when the rules of engagement are transgressed. To phrase this differently, perhaps fandom implies getting (at least in the experience of the fans themselves) closer to the positions of the implied or ideal viewer, listener, reader, than the general audience. Arguably, Game of Thrones, by successfully creating an implied or ideal viewer – the viewer whom the show seems to “expect” or “hope for” – created the very kind of viewer who would be a true fan. However, this then led to a scandal when the show transgressed the rules of engagement that were established in the process and that true fan turned against the show.

A show or band can, as our analysis shows, become its own driver, stripping the producers of their authorial authority. The question remains, in that case, how much authority fans have when responding to or interpreting narratives like the myth of the KLF or Game of Thrones. That is, if the makers lose authority, is it the fans who then create the very categories of implied or ideal audiences that they themselves would attempt to occupy? This may be why Bill Drummond, ever the radical, suggests being content with imaginary bands. At the very least, imaginary musicians cannot whitewash your car. More broadly speaking, they leave the authority fully and firmly on the side of the audience. Feeling the pressure of stakeholders to see a return of investment, showrunners may instead seek to manage fans, as a form of brand management as it is called (Burgess and Jones 2023; Mellancon and Gardner 2021), and keep this authority on the side of the producers. In any case, whether they agree with Bill Drummond that to become disillusioned with your heroes is the best thing a fan can be offered by those heroes, or whether they channel this disillusionment, instead, into a scandalized anti-fandom: fans, ultimately, may conclude that it is better to have cared deeply and be disappointed, than to never have cared at all.