Sam (7:56)

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Professor Julian Womble (8:25)

Packages by Expedia. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights, hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia. Made to travel. When I had to think about my favorite moment with Gilderoy Lockhart, I really had to rack my brain because I cannot stand Gilderoy Lockhart. I hate incompetence. I'm really, really bad when people don't do things well but think that they can. Like, if you tell me you can't do it and then that's one thing. But if you tell me you can do it and then you can't deliver, I'm absolutely incensed. I can't handle it. And so someone like Gilderoy Lockhart makes me feel like I'm losing my mind. But one scene that I absolutely love is filled with quotes that I use in my daily life is the scene with him and Harry when Harry has been given detention and is filling out Lockhart's fan mail. And he's talking about, you know, fame is a fickle friend and celebrity is as celebrity does. And it's just so incredible because here is this fraud, this mess of a man who is famous, yes, but not nearly as famous as Harry, but really does think that he is and is like trying to give Harry advice. And what's so fascinating about this moment that I really love is that it gives us a sense of the fact that Lockhart is fully bought into the delusion of his own celebrity, right? Like, not that he isn't famous, but rather that this fame is like justly earned. And he's giving advice to a child, right? A 12 year old who is actually legitimately famous, albeit for something that he had no control over, but also a person who doesn't really want to be famous. Like, Harry is so uninterested in actually being famous famous, and yet he is like having to entertain this man whose whole ambition has been to be someone of repute, right? Someone of note. And Harry's just kind of like. I mean, I guess if you care about that kind of thing, Harry just wants to be just Harry, like he told Hagrid, right, in the hut. And so what this scene for me really speaks to is just how delusional Lockhart is and how bought into his own kind of propaganda he is. Like he's drunk his own Kool Aid in such a crazy way. And we talked about this a little bit for Quirrell and we talked about this a little bit for a couple of other characters where it's like, you have to believe this so much in order for it to be believable. Like, you have to believe it so that you can perform it. One of my dear family friends is a model and she was saying, like, in order to like, look fierce, you have to feel fierce. Which is probably why I was so bad at it when I was younger. And I feel like that mentality is one that also finds its way here with Lockhart. Right. Like, in order to sell the lie, you have to believe the lie. And I love this moment because it really does. It's our first look at just how deluded he is. You know, he is a walking PR campaign with absolutely no depth. It's a fantasy so desperate for relevance that he keeps inserting himself into spaces he doesn't belong, just to maintain the illusion and the delusion. And I find it to be so just. I find it so funny because he's talking to someone who's legitimately famous, who's just kind of like, yeah, whatever. Like, can I just get out of here? I just want to do my lines. I want to write these stupid little things so that I can get out. And Lockhart has deluded himself into thinking, like, he is actually being a mentor. Like, that he's helping Harry. And again, there's nothing worse than someone who's, like, trying to be a mentor but has absolutely no idea how to do it themselves and is, like, trying to convince you that they do while also trying to convince themselves at the same time. It's. Look, it's too much. And I just find this scene to be so funny. But it also encapsulates so much about who Lockhart is as a person. When asked what word best describes Gilderoy Lockhart, the top three words were vain, fraud, and selfish. There are a couple of quotes that I think really do capture these particular sentiments. One is, he wanted fame more than he wanted to be a good person. Another is all charm, no substance. And another is he believed the myth. That's the saddest part. When we look at Gilderoy Lockhart, we see someone who is so self obsessed, so invested in his own image. Like, literally his own image. He has pictures of himself hung up outside of the, like, classroom. Well, not outside the classroom. In the classroom, there is a level of vanity that is almost hard to comprehend. But when you think about those kinds of things, and we'll talk about this as the episode progresses, it just feels like he is so insecure. Like, I love pictures of myself. I love a good selfie. I can't imagine a world where I'm, like, having pictures of myself hanging up. Like, that's crazy work. I was just working on my bio for a gig that I'm doing in a couple of days, and I was like, oh, I hate talking about myself. Gilderoy Lockhart doesn't. He loves talking about himself. He loves reminding you of all the things that he's done, quote, unquote. And in some ways, right, like the vanity makes the fraudulent behavior even worse. Because it's like if you just lied about doing all these people's things and then were quiet about it and let people praise you, that would be not better, but at least I could stomach it more. But the fact that you are so fraudulent and then turning around and being like a megalomaniac about it, it just makes me absolutely crazy. And they go together hand in hand. So it makes a lot of sense. But it's also just like. So to be clear, you've done none of the things that you've done. And instead of just letting people praise you for your lies, you want to keep reminding them about how great you are. Which says to me that you don't actually think you're that great or that you think that someone is hip to your tricks and you're trying to kind of persuade them to not believe the evidence that's right in front of them. Either way, I can't deal with it. And the selfishness, I think, is a byproduct of the vanity and the fraudulence, right? Because he has to really only be concerned about himself. Because if he is concerned about anyone else, then there's a greater chance that all his lies are going to be exposed. And so I think these words really do encapsulate so much of who he is. I would add delusional, because you have to really believe the lie in order for all of this to work. And what else is interesting, and I'll talk about this a little bit in the reflection, right, is that he is giving all of this advice to Harry, but he's not famous, like I already said. But what else is true is that he's trying to be the mentor he never had. So he's like cosplaying someone who's actually famous. And I think he thinks that this is how famous people behave. And I feel like this is something that we experience a lot, right, where there are people who have no conception of what it is to be famous, what it is to be wealthy, what it is to be any sort of thing that's elevated above kind of their own experiences. And they then kind of overplay their hand in some ways until someone's like, hey, you need to chill out. Or it's like when you're a teenager and you think you understand what it means to be an adult, and so you do all of this really stupid stuff because you think that that's how adults behave, and then you realize very quickly, either because an adult told you or you just learn that that's actually not how adulthood works and that adulting is garbage and maybe you don't want it, but that there is this kind of preliminary stage of overcompensation and doing way too much to prove yourself as an adult. And we see even in these books, right, you know, Hermione is queen of overcompensation, because it's like, girl, you're better than everyone. You don't have to do this. But she does it because she's trying to convince other people and I think, and herself, that she belongs. And so that when we look at Lockhart, what we see is someone who is vain, who is fraudulent, who is selfish. And at the root of it, it all seems to stem from this fear that someone is gonna find him out. And if he believes it and performs it well enough, I think he thinks he can keep people kind of in the dark. And to be clear, I am not trying to defend him or make up any sort of alternative tale to the foolishness that he brings to bear. But I do think it's important for us to kind of get at the root of why he does what he does. And I don't think it's because he actually believes he's that great. I mean, I think he presents like he does. But at the end of the day, we're talking about someone who is so deeply, deeply, deeply insecure and wants nothing more than people to see him as he believes he should be seen and not see the truth of who he is.

Sam (18:47)

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Professor Julian Womble (19:17)

Packages by Expedia. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights, hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia made to travel. It is time for our arithmancy lesson. For this episode's arithmancy lesson, we had 542 responses. The first question is, is Gilderoy Lockhart a good person? 0.7% said yes. About 94% of us said no. And 5% of us said don't know. Someone wrote, does lying make someone a bad person? Because Dumbledore would be the biggest villain. Also, Dumbledore knew he did the memory charms by his statement impaled by your own sword after Ron says his memory was wiped due to a backfiring memory charm. So Dumby knew and chose to do nothing. Hashtag notsurprised. Now listen, I already know. Before we get into the other comments, I already know that this is going to lead to some uproar. Hmm. This is going to lead to some uproar. We are not discussing Dumbledore yet, friends. Take your notes. Put it in your notes app. Save it for another time. This episode is about Gilderoy Lockhart and I already know. I already know that Dumbledore's defenders and his biggest detractors are ready. Just build up that evidence for the Dumbledore episodes with an S because there will be multiple and they are coming, but they are not right now. But points have been made. Someone else wrote. This man is not a good person, an entertaining person, but he permanently damaged the memories of many wizards and witches for some clout. Plus he attempted to do the same to Harry and ron, who were 12. Someone else wrote, and this is a longer one, but I think it captures a lot of things they wrote. I found it hard to decide whether he is a good person when his memory charm backfired and his memory is completely wiped. He you could almost see that as a pure essence of his character because it's all wiped of his memories and life experiences, but it doesn't alter your core personality. When his memories are removed, he is completely harmless and seems very cooperative and amiable. He retains his natural charm in a much more pleasing form that hasn't been corrupted by fame and ambition. Ultimately, if we decide that quote unquote goodness is decided by our actions and choices rather than our basic nature, then Lockhart definitely isn't a good person. Choosing to steal the heroic stories of ordinary people and allowing himself to be increasingly corrupted by the pursuit of fame until he reached a point where he was prepared to perform the Memory Charm on Ron and Harry and ruin the lives of two innocent children. The way you hear him try to convince himself that it is the only available option and justify the decision to himself makes me think that he has gone down a very slippery slope of increasingly questionable ethical decisions until he doesn't even realize himself how far he's gone and how bad some of his decisions really have been. Okay, this is really fascinating, right, because on one hand we have the reality of what he does, right? His willingness to steal the lives and stories of people, and then also the reality of, you know, how much of that is truly him. And I think, you know, we've talked a lot about a lot of characters so far in the podcast. And I think what's really important, at least for me when I think about this question is the reality of, you know, we are the sum of our choices. And Gilderoy makes some choices, right? He decides to go and steal these stories. Even if we take into account the really interesting perspective of what happens when his memory is wiped, the reality is, is that he may have been that person. But, you know, whether you are a good or a bad person isn't necessarily an absolute thing. And now some of us might say he is a person who made bad choices. And this is a refrain that we get very frequently. But it seems to me that you all reserve that particular, that particular critique only for characters that are cast as bad people who you like Draco or. Right. And so none of you brought that up. Like that is not something that I got from any of the comments right. About, oh, he's just a person who made bad choices. The vast majority of us, the vast majority of us said that he is a bad person. 94% of us said he's a bad person who made these particular kinds of decisions. And so in the post episode chat, I think it would be interesting and fun for us to think about, you know, how come the, you know, there are no good or bad people, just people who make choices isn't something that we are willing to extend to Gilderoy. He has a pretty privilege, so it can't be that. So there's something else at work here. But I think taking what you all have offered, I do think that it's, it feels very easy to see that he is a bad person because he didn't just do it once, right? He said it numerous times. And I think what's so fascinating about the way that this world is written and the way that we understand Memory Charms is that they're written to be these very kind of innocuous things. But then we also see the backside of that, right? Like we see what happens to Lockhart. We see what happens to Bertha Jorkins, we see what happens to the Roberts family from the Quidditch World Cup. We see all of these instances where we understand that Memory Charms are dangerous, they should probably be regulated by law. They are not. And so that when we think about all of those other people who have been on the bad side of Memory Charms and we think about what that means for Gilderoy's victims, it stands to reason that these are not the actions of a good person. These are the actions of someone who is more invested in themselves, their legacy, their own prestige than anything else. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that. That they are seen the way that they want to be seen. And morality is thrown out of the window. Compassion, empathy. Gone. And we just have. We're stuck with a man who is willing to inflict long lasting, irreparable harm on people. Because these memory charms have to be so strong, because the person can't remember any of it. And we don't know if he's kind of putting in other memories to make them think another thing like Voldemort did to innumerable victims of his. He might just be wiping them. And who's to say that what happened to him ultimately isn't what was happening to these other people? That's not the behavior of someone that I would consider to even be a morally gray person. It's just giving bad. Is Gilderoy Lockhart a good teacher? 4%. No. Not 4%. 0.4% of us said yes, 99.1% of us said said no. And 0.6% of us said don't. No. We were so close, y' all. This was the question where we almost. For the vast majority of the survey while it was out, we had a hundred percent of people saying no. But there's always. I think there's one person who said yes and one person who said don't know. And so there's always agents of chaos among us. All right, someone wrote Lockhart is a good teacher. Geez, Louise. The chaos that's about to come from this. Thank you to whoever wrote this. Someone wrote, lockhart is a good teacher. Not only does he give the students practical applications to their studies, even if it is through his own incompetence, but he is also an excellent example of how not to be a wizard. Well, and isn't that interesting, because sometimes teaching isn't about what the lessons you teach, but the life you lead. You heard it here first. Someone else wrote, I think he's the worst teacher of the lot. Even worse than Umbridge when it comes to the academics, at least, because she gave them an actual defense book. Bad as it was, they learned nothing for that year. I'm shocked that the owl and newt students didn't try to murder him at one point. Poor kids. And someone else wrote, is Gilderoy Lockhart a good defense against a dark arts teacher? Definitely not. But his attempts at teaching Harry the art of celebrity, a subject that he actually knows. Does he Might have been more productive if Harry was an interested and willing student. I wouldn't take a class with Gilderoy Lockhart if you told me that it was literally anyone else. He's not. This is where the selfishness comes in. And I talked a little bit about this before in the Lupin episode, right? Like, I've had teachers where they're more concerned about themselves and who they are than they are in actually teaching students. And that's Gilroy Lockhart. Right? Like, this entire endeavor is a vanity project. And I think because he's bought into the delusion of who he is, he doesn't think it really matters what he teaches because they're just lucky to have him in the classroom. And to that, I say, sir, goodbye, good night, and good riddance. He is absolutely the worst kind of teacher because he believes his own hype. He is literally trying to sell delusions. I also am not the biggest fan of teachers who only use their book as the text. Now, there are some moments where I'll make exceptions, and that's if you're teaching something that's, like, outlandishly niche and no one has thought about it in the way that you have before. But even then, I think it's important for us to bring different perspectives into the classroom, to offer students options so that they can really form an informed understanding of a topic. Gilderoy Lockhart said, only me and y' all. Not a quiz about. Not a trivia quiz on all of his favorite things. Like, you're not teaching them. And it's so fascinating because, again, it would be one thing. It still wouldn't be a good thing, but it would be one thing if we were dealing with a time at Hogwarts where we weren't dealing with Voldemort's imminent return. But not even a year ago, Voldemort was attached to the back of a head of a teacher who ended up dead in a cavern underneath the castle. And. And so, you know, constant vigilance, y' all. Like, what are we. What are we doing? And it's one of these things where it's like, especially for Defense against the Dark Arts, it seems so important and so necessary for it to be something that is good. And so it strikes me as even more dangerous to have someone like Gilderoy Lockhart who is not invested at all in teaching these kids and probably just said yes because he needed to take a break from stealing people's memories. He's not interested in being a good teacher, and he's not teaching them anything as a result. And so for me, as a person who teaches, there is no pedagogy, there is no perspective, there is no anything. It is all a vanity project trying to get younger fans, right? I feel like he's like, I gotta get a younger demo because the middle age witches are not doing it like they used to. And that there's no way that I could even begin to fathom an idea of him being a good teacher. Even with the really solid spin of, you know, teaching Harry about the art of celebrity, he doesn't know how to be a celebrity. Like he doesn't know what he's doing because if he did, he would be keeping a much lower profile so that no one would get hip on his fraudulent behavior. But he wants to be in the spotlight and people like that burn out fast. And didn't he and didn't he burn out fast? I think, you know, there's so much at stake. People's lives, people's careers, people's ability to do certain things right. Like the point about the owl and any wts is such a good one because there are older students who need to have this information to be able to pass these exams, to be able to go into the careers they want to go into. And because he's so interested in just having them know things about him and not actually know things about the subject, he is potentially ruining these people's lives and making it so much more difficult for them to be able to pursue the things they want to pursue. And he's completely uninterested. He does not care about that. And so it's for those reasons and many, many, many others that I can't in good conscious say that he's a good teacher. I simply cannot.

Advertiser (32:51)

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Professor Julian Womble (33:26)

Is Gilderoy Lockhart a good Ravenclaw? About 28% of us said yes, 58% of us said no, and about 14% of us said don't. No. I hoped this question would be chaotic, and this variation is giving us a bit of chaos. Someone wrote, gilderoy is the equivalent of all the white people with imperialist mindsets who go into indigenous foreign lands, experience their ways with them, find some cool things they're doing, and then come back home and remarket them as their original new invention that they found, quote, unquote, by accident. Another person wrote, no, I guess I could see how he could be a Ravenclaw because he did value and pursue knowledge in a way. It's just that he didn't intake it or learn from it, really. Almost more of a chaotic neutral than anything else, if you think about it. Now, this is really interesting to me because I feel like again, when we talk about Ravenclaws and we had a bit of this conversation in the Prof. Response episode about Quirrel, because we don't get a lot about Ravenclaws, it gives us a lot of room to really imbue it with what we think it should be. And I think this is particularly true for Hufflepuffs and for Ravenclaws because we spend so much time in the text with Gryffindors and with Slytherins that we have a much better sense of those things. But I think what's an interesting question that came up for me as I was thinking about this and reading through your comments is it has to do with intention, right? I think many people talk about wisdom and knowledge and the pursuit of it. But the question that came up for me as I was thinking through this and kind of thinking about what you all would bring to bear is why do you want the knowledge and what do you plan to do with it? Because it is rare that people are simply pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowing things, right? And if that's the bar of what it means to be a good Ravenclaw, then a lot of people fall outside of it, right? Because there are very few people who just want to know to know. There's generally a reason, right? Like when we think about some people want to have history books because they find it interesting, and I think that that's cool. But there are also people who read these things so that they can go to parties and brag about how much they know or they can prove that they're smarter than other people. And are those people any different from the people who simply pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake? And does that distinction mean that one should be a Ravenclaw and another one shouldn't be? Like, I feel like part of our struggle right now is that we don't have the bounds. And what we're realizing is that. And I was talking to someone yesterday, I was recording a podcast episode with a person who is also a chronic overthinker here, and we were talking about the idea of what it means to kind of be a part of the Ravenclaw house and its interactions with other attributes that tend to be placed onto other houses. Right. And it strikes me that so many people particularly like the Ravenclaws among us and there are many of you, because this is nerdy stuff, that many of you have very strict rules about what it means to be a part of your group. And I'm interested in your discussion and I know that there are some of you who will be in that post episode chat. I want to know the rules. Like, why is it that Gilderoy Lockhart is not a good Ravenclaw? Like, he had to go and learn about what these people did in order to steal it effectively. He had to learn how to do the memory modification in a certain way. He had to go and sit and study some of these. It's not as if he just showed up and was like, tell the story. I'm going to tell. He had. Any theater kids out there will know that learning your lines and really embodying it insofar that you can then do it. Well, it would be one thing if he had ChatGPT, but he probably didn't. Maybe he did, but he had to spin this as a story. There was work that had to be done that requires a level of intellectual acumen and we can spin it and say it wasn't noble and it wasn't. But is the pursuit of knowledge always noble? Right. Like, is the idea of. And if it is, does that mean. Is that the requirement in order to be in Ravenclaw? Because we know. And again, I'm always gonna come back to her. Helena Ravenclaw ran off with that diadem and her pursuit was not noble. Right. Like, it feels to me that we have to kind of grapple with the notion of intention as it pertains to the knowledge and to wisdom. Right? To the usage of one's wisdom and understanding. What is it that we are expecting? If you had to build your perfect Ravenclaw, what does that person look like? And more importantly, why is it someone who's just in the library? Because here's the other thing. Knowing things but not sharing your knowledge seems to be just as problematic. Right? Because it's like if you know something that can help someone and you don't tell them because you're under the belief that they should just go and figure it out themselves, how is that any better than what we see other people doing? I don't know. I'm just here asking the questions. I feel like I'm gonna get raked across the coals for this. But I feel like as we move forward, I want us to be able. I mean, a lot of people said, you know, he's not a good Ravenclaw. And I'm interested in the why, because it takes a lot of skill to be able to pull off a scam this well, right? And when we think about a lot of our people who are pulling these things off, like, it takes a lot of thought and intellect and acumen and understanding and knowledge. Like, you've got to know how the world around you works. You've got to be able to read people well enough to know how your lives are gonna land. Like, there is work that goes into this. It is not just an easy thing. And so if being a Ravenclaw is about the pursuit of knowledge, then, like, are people who. Is it only people who then pursue it, or is it how they use that knowledge? Like, what are the bounds? In academia, it's always, what are the scope conditions? Right? Like, how do we understand or know a good Ravenclaw when we see them? I want us to have that conversation because it feels like an important one. Because I can already feel people coming in being like, he's not a good Ravenclaw and I want to know why. And I want something that's like, relatively generalizable, right? Like, I don't want us to pull from our own. Like, maybe we can come together as a collective and come up with a good definition because we don't get one in the book and we get a lot of characters that conflict. A lot of the more kind of pure understandings of what it means to be part of this house. Is Gilderoy Lockhart a good half blood? About 23% of us said yes, 35% of us said no, and about 42% of us said don't know. Someone wrote I said that he was a good half blood because I believe in a pureblood society, it might be worse to be a half blood. Muggle Borns are new to the world and I see them as kind of happy to be here. But being half blood, they've been exposed to prejudice from childhood and therefore may feel inferior to pureblood. Similar to Severus and Evoldi, they feel like they have a lot to prove and sometimes overcompensate by calling oneself princess or the Dark Lord, for example, or trying to subjugate the entire magical community. So Gilderoy sought fame and renown and decided to do it by any means necessary. He succeeded until he didn't. So I would call him a good half blood. Someone else wrote, lockhart relies on his good looks and fabulous hair. Darling. He wants people to think that he has talent to do all the things he says he does, but he never wants to do the work needed to be able to actually do it. He seems sure he should be able to do them without the inconvenience of effort. He's not after knowledge or skill or even community. All he's after is fame and glory. This isn't about navigating half blood identity. It's about vanity and self importance. So no, he's not a good half blood, just a very shallow one. And then another person wrote, and I thought this was interesting, he may be a good half blood if he stole from, from purebloods and Muggle borns alike. If the scam is ecumenical in nature, then, well, maybe we're looking at a good half blood. I love that as a response because I think it's really fascinating to think about the idea. I want us to look at this in our kind of prevailing paradigm. Right. Are two options. One, he is a good half blood because he's upholding pure blood supremacist ideology. We actually don't see him doing that here. Right. Like he's in it for himself. I don't think he really cares about the internal politic of the society if it doesn't serve his own ends. And so, you know, he's not trying to pass himself off as being pure blood. I think he's just telling us, selling a story and he's just kind of doing whatever he wants. And I don't think he truly cares about pure blood supremacy because at this point in his life and his career, it's not affecting him in any meaningful way. And he probably doesn't even think he needs to be connected in that way because he's probably got pure blood readers. He's got pure blood women who love him. Like, look at Molly Weasley, right? So he's like, as long as I'm untouched by this, I don't really care about it. And then when we look at our other paradigm, building a bridge between the Muggle world and the magical world, we don't see that here either. Right. I don't think that Gilderoy Lockhart is a person who cares about politics unless the politic has anything to do with his own ends. If it affects his book sales, if it affects the way that he is viewed by other people, then I think he cares. But this is the beauty of pretty privilege. You don't have to navigate spaces in the same way that other people do. You don't have to worry about it. It's also the beauty of celebrity, right, is that it elevates you to certain statuses that you may not be able to be in if you weren't the celebrity that you are. And so he probably is like, it doesn't matter what I am. I'm me. So to the extent that I need to really be concerned or worried about, like, you know, what's going on with Purebloods or what's going on with Muggle Borns, like, that's none of my business, because I'm rich. There is. I'm rich and I'm famous. There is a quote, and I can't remember if it's true or not, but, like, that came from O.J. simpson, and. And he basically was like, I'm O.J. and that was the response to people talking about, like, you know, anything that had to do with claims made against him or racism. He was just like, yeah, none of that affects me. I'm me. And there are a lot of celebrities who operate from that space, right, that are like, I'm not affected by whatever, you know, societal ills are running around here because I'm me. I'm famous. I'm rich. And so I'm beyond all of that. And that feels very apropos as we think about who Lockhart is. Someone who feels very above all of the issues and problems of any given society at any given moment. He's like, yeah, that's not my problem. It's not my business, because I don't have to worry about that. I'm wealthy and I'm pretty. And so he's privileged enough to not have to deal with this. And so I don't think he's a good half blood, because he doesn't have to be. All he has to do is be rich and famous, and then everything else falls into place. And I feel like there are a lot of people in our own society who we want to, you know, be speaking out on social issues, who we want to be kind of present. And they are like, yeah, I'm unaffected by that. So. So I'm not interested in that. Which is then what makes other celebrities who are more engaged and much more vocal about certain things, it makes them stand out in meaningful ways. But Gilderor Lockhart doesn't care about that. He's not interested in that. That's not his business. It's not his ministry. He simply cares about himself. And this kind of brings us back to the notion of the fraudulent behavior and the selfishness and the vanity. Because the other thing is that if he. He opens his mouth in support of something and it's not the right thing at the right time, everything that he's done blows up because he doesn't like, he can't risk exposure. So he just needs to allow a celebrity to keep him flying just under this kind of societal, political radar so that he can do what he wants to do and not worry about people figuring out the truth. Is Gilderoy Lockhart a villain? About 68% of us said yes, 23% of us said no, and 9% of us said don't know. Someone wrote, he's a conniving, manipulative, inept individual who will stop at nothing to get his fame and fortune. Detestable, Someone else wrote, I don't see Lockhart as a villain. I think he's self absorbed, in vain, which leads him to do things that hurt others. But I don't think it's intentional. Someone else wrote, I answered no to his being a villain. He does deceitful and bad things, but essentially the man is phenomenally vain and ridiculous. Those are certainly not good traits. But he doesn't go as far as inviting vuldkins to hang out on the back of his head. He's not after world domination, but fame and fortune and everything that goes with it. Idiot. Ironically, but not evil. And someone else wrote, he may be the villain in some people's stories, but he's not in Harry's. This is the chaos that we thrive on here at Critical Magic Theory. Because I think that what you all are offering us is a very nuanced understanding of what it means to be a villain and the contextual factors that play, play a part in one's villainy. Because I think that last comment, he may be the villain in some people's stories, but not in Harry's, is a really fascinating one. Right. And again, there are questions about, like, is someone who does bad things a villain? And how do we then, you know, do we compare him to the Big Bad? Like, do we compare him to Voldemort, which we are going to do in the reflection, so just hold on for that. Or do we take his actions as they are? Right. Like. And does it matter who he's the villain to or which story he's the villain in? Does that change or alter the way that we understand the villainous nature with which he operates? I also want to invite us to think about something that I was really thinking about, because this came up a lot, obviously, because the big thing is that he's, you know, modified the memories or stolen the memories of so many people. But, y' all. So does so many people in this series like the usage of memory charms to change the way that people understand themselves, understand what's happened to them, understand their stories, is something that we see time and time and time and time again in these books. And some of our favorite characters, the people who we have rated very highly on these surveys are people who, if not have performed them themselves, have stood by and watched governmental officials use them. The story of these memory charms that Lockhart uses is bad. Don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, is it the usage of the memory charms? Is it the stealing of other people's, like, stories? Like, what is it? Because it can't just be the modification of memory. Because if it's just the modification of memory, then the wizarding world in and of itself is a problem. Then the wizarding world in and of itself is villainous because Lockhart is doing nothing. That is not what he's doing, isn't illegal. Ah, what he's doing is not illegal. He's modifying memories. There's no laws against that. They have an entire memory modification squad in the Ministry of Magic. So what we see him doing, it is bad. Don't get me wrong. Right? But my question for us becomes, like, what's the line in the villainy here? Right? We've seen memories be modified. We saw Aunt Marge's memory get modified again. We, the Roberts at the Quidditch World cup, had their memory modified. And at least for them, we could justify it as like, it was for their safety, it was for their protection because they had gone through a traumatic ordeal. Maybe, Maybe. But we've also seen it done on Aunt Marge. Like, we've seen it done a lot. We see it done by Hermione on her parents. So is it again, does it bring us back to this notion of intention? Like, why you did it? Does that change this? Is it because he did it for his own fame and fortune? Is it because he did it because he wants to be someone of note? Is that what makes him a villain? Because I think that this is an important question, and I think that he is a villain. I do. But I want to push us to think about the why. Because what he does is so not that different from what we see so many other people in the magical world do. It feels important for us to again, establish some scope conditions when we think about this, because this isn't morally gray, like, he's stealing people's work and that's crazy work to like do that. He's stealing people's lives. He's ruining their lives with these spells. But I'm like, how do we reconcile the fact that what he did is not illegal? Like, is it different because he did it on magical people? Like, how do we justify this? Because we've seen these things used left and right and we don't know what they're implanting in people's brains. We have no idea. And so I think it's important for us to really have to grapple with the reality that yes, what he did is bad. No denying it, he stole people's lives. But the way that he went about doing it, the means that he went about establishing this completely legal, used by the government all the time. All the time. And in theory, right, it's supposed to be for the protection of the magical populace. But we also see at the beginning of the Half Blood Prince, they just changed a meeting with the president of a foreign country because it was inconvenient for Cornelius Fudge and they said, he's gonna forget, he'll do it tomorrow. So we can see the abuse of this. And so I'm wondering how we reconcile that particular reality with the reality of the purported villainy that is put forth by Gilderoy Lockhart. I want us to think about it. Meet me in the post episode chat. I'm going to be there waiting because give me a lot to talk about in the Prof. Responds episode because I have a lot of questions for you all. I need some scope conditions.

Sam (54:21)

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Professor Julian Womble (54:55)

We've now reached the point point in the episode where I'm going to give a reflection on Gilderoy Lockhart. But before we dive in, I want us to take a moment because if you've been listening along, which many of you have, I know, then you know we just did our episode on Quirrel and if you thought he was doing the most with ambition and delusion and power chasing Lockhart said, hold my peacock. Quill. Hello, two Ravenclaws, back to back. To defend against the dark arts professors whose ambition didn't just overtake them, it literally hollowed them out. One gave his body to Voldemort, and the other gave himself to his own myth and legend. Neither of them knew who they were without the performance. So it only makes sense to move from Quirrell straight to Lockhart. And this is the question that I kind of want to be the guiding thing that we go through as we think through this reflection together. What would you do to be remembered? Some of y' all know that I just went to the Beyonce concert on my birthday this past Sunday, and there's a lyric from her song sixteen Carriages that I've been thinking about even before I went to the concert, because it always stands out to me. And the lyric is, had to sacrifice and leave my fears behind for legacy. If it's the last thing I do, you'll remember me. Because we've got something to prove in your memory. And that's kind of what we're going to be talking about, right? Legacy, memory, control. What does it mean to want to be remembered, but, like, remembered in a very specific way, the right way, the way that you want to be remembered? And the thing about that lyric that always gets me is I'm like, yeah, but you're Beyonce. Like, Beyonce, you've done everything. You have dominated the music industry for 25 years. You have done all of these amazing things. You know, you've won all of these awards, accolades, the Nine, the Full Tilt. And yet somehow you still feel like you have something to prove and that your legacy is something that isn't secure, it's not locked into place, as if you're not going to go down as one of the greatest performers of all time, Right? And it just always strikes me as, like, very odd. But then I think about, you know, how this album, Cowboy Carter, came to be, and it's because, like, the country music world would not accept her. And they demanded, in many ways, that she prove herself all over again. And as if, like, she's not who she is. And so that this moving bar of what it means to have a kind of secured legacy is something that really makes me think a lot about how we understand the choices that are made here by Gilderoy Lockhart. Right? And again, thinking about what is it that you're willing to do, right? Like, Beyonce had to prove herself to country people in a way that I find to be, like, offensive, that they would even that people, the country powers that be, would require this of someone who's so well established in the industry, broadly construed. And has shown herself to be capable of doing so many different kinds of genres of music. And so. And so this notion of still needing to solidify her legacy, it brings up for me, again, the question of, what would you do to be remembered? And when we think about this in terms of Lockhart, you know, it's like, would you exaggerate a little or let folks think something you did, something that you didn't? Would you erase someone's name and put your name on it? You know, that's what Gilderoy Lockhart did. And we talked about this scene at the beginning of the episode, the detention scene. Harry's sitting there writing lines, and Lockhart is going on and on about fame. Just like, talking like, this child is out here trying to manage a PR scandal. Which in some ways he was, right, because the car was kind of a mess in Chamber of Secrets. But what really gets me, as I said before, is that Lockhart literally believes this. He thinks that he and Harry are peers in the struggle for celebrity. And he thinks he's offering wisdom, and that's what makes it dangerous, right? Like, he's not pretending. He's literally a delusional person. He's been living in the performance so long that the applause has started to sound like truth. He's rewritten. Not just other people's stories, he's rewritten his own. Hello. Like, he's literally changed the narrative on who he is. And somewhere along the way, he started believing that the lie was his legacy. And that is when I realized the stories he tells, the books he's written, the performance that he's giving out in public, they're all his Horcruxes. Just like Voldemort split his soul into objects tied to power and memory, Lockhart split his identity into stories that were never his to begin with. Voldemort took the cup, he took the locket, he took the ring, he took the diadem, and he made them into his own things. Just like Lockhart went in and took those people's stories and turned them into his own thing, right? He finds people who survive something real, something meaningful. And instead of celebrating them, he erases them. He obliviates them so that there's nothing left on the COVID but his name. And we've seen it before, right? Like, that's colonialism. That's what it does. Show up somewhere. Take what's not yours, call it a discovery, and make sure that no one remembers who it actually belonged to. And here's the part that, like, I've been really having to grapple with. Once you lie, like, really, truly, deeply lie, you have to keep lying. And, you know, your parents may have told you this. Mine definitely didn't. You know, once you tell a lie, you have to keep lying. And it feels hyperbolic when you are a child, but what you realize is that when you tell a big enough lie, you have to start really living in it. Because the second you tell the truth, the whole thing unravels. So Lockhart has to live inside this delusion, inside this fantasy. He has to keep showing up, keep talking, keep inserting himself into things that he has no business being in just to maintain the illusion. And what's true is in some ways, right. The maintenance of the illusion would be a lot easier if he was actually smart enough to just know when to shut up. But he's not. And part of that is because he's not grounded in reality, because he has no tether. So he just constantly overplays his hand. And that's how things fall apart. A broken wand, the collapsing chamber, the memory charm backfiring, the rocks literally coming down on top of him. That's not just the plot of his demise. It's a metaphor. It's every false narrative he built caving in. And yet, when we see him again, in order, the Phoenix memory gone, mind fragile, he's still Lockhart, signing autographs, still posing. Because even without the story, the myth survives because other people around him are feeding it, right? So he's got fans writing into him. He doesn't know who they are or why they're writing into him. He says that, but he's still kind of doing the thing of being a celebrity. And that's how this stuff works. Fame doesn't need facts. It just needs repetition. And look, we're living in this moment, too. Books banned, history's whitewashed, people actively choosing to forget. It's not just about memory charms. It's about the ways that society decides what's worth remembering, right? When we think about the way that history is written, right, the spoils always goes to the victors. And who writes the stories? The victors. And so that when we think about so many of the histories of many of our countries, no matter where you are in the world, much of what we learn is from the people who, quote, unquote, won. And they do all of that because that's how they want to be remembered. When we think about, particularly in the American context right now, the revocation and removal of certain narratives and stories for the sake of promoting A very particular image of our country. It's done because we want to be remembered a certain way. When we think about making things great again. Part of the desire to do that is because it is grounded in a belief that history is better than the present, because history can be rewritten and. And the present can't be. Because when you let someone else tell your story, you might not like the version they give you. And I've been thinking about that because I'm a kind of person who totally keeps things close to the chest. I am so afraid of being seen as braggadocious or being seen as arrogant that I don't really talk about a lot of my accomplishments. I don't always correct things. I kind of just keep things to myself for the sake of feeling humble. And I figure, you know, my work will speak for itself. But the reality is, is that, like, silence isn't always neutral, because while I'm quiet, there are Lockharts out there who aren't, who will take the work, the narrative, the space, and twist it into something that serves them. And I know I'm not the only one. And I know that many of you are going to come for me for this and talk about, you know, not talking to your therapist. I'm telling you, this is coming from a very personal place because a lot of us are taught to be humble and taught not to brag and taught that survival is enough and we don't always have to tell our stories. And I think that there are moments and spaces and places where you have to use discretion about the story that you're going to tell, if you tell it at all. And I'm not saying that you need to tell your story, but I do think that in a world where so many people are devoid of interesting and compelling stories to tell, that they will tell a story about you, for you, that you may not like. And maybe it's your story and you're not even in it. And that's what Lockhart does, right? He doesn't kill anyone to steal their life. He just needs them to stay quiet because all he needs is the story. He doesn't need anything else. He doesn't need you. He just needs the story. And there are so many Lockharts running around here, so many Voldemort's. All they care about is their legacy. And they will do whatever it takes to make sure that it's the legacy that they want. And that there are many moments where those of us who are afraid and not necessarily thinking about our legacy because we're too afraid of being seen as doing too much, are not sharing our own stories. And it's in the silence, right? It's in the space where we are too afraid. It's in that space of fear that the Lockharts and Voldemort's and Quirrell swoop in. Because again, they don't need to steal your life, they just need you to be quiet. Because that's when the lie becomes immortal.

Sam (66:18)

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Professor Julian Womble (67:02)

This has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and thank you all so much for listening. If you liked today's episode. First of all, thank you. Please feel free to like rate, subscribe and do all the things that one does where pods are cast. Remember the that the Dolores Umbridge survey will be available on Patreon starting on Thursday and Friday. For everyone else y' all, I thank you so much and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the post episode chat. I know that there were some takes that might be taken in a specific way and that's okay. Bars. I cannot wait to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to share. Do all the things I think I've already said that, but just in case I didn't subscribe it again, please feel free to find us online. Criticalmagic theory.com patreon.com criticalmagictheory Send me an email if you want to chat with me about the episode. Criticalmagictheorymail.com Y' all, I'm so grateful for you. Thank you all so much. And until next time, be critical and stay magical my friends. Bye.