The Curious Case of Ludo Bagman
A few years after college, Twitter gifted me a website where I could test my Harry Potter knowledge, and I jumped at the opportunity. It was a timed task: could I type in the names of the 50 most mentioned characters from Harry Potter in under five minutes? The answer was yes, I could, and I could do it without consulting the books or Google (not that I want to brag, but I kind of do). Pretty much all 50 characters listed appeared in more than one of the seven books in the series, all except one. One character only appeared in one book, The Goblet of Fire, and he was mentioned so many times in that one book that he made it to the top 50. That character is, of course, Ludo Bagman.
Ludo Bagman doesn’t make it into the movie version of The Goblet of Fire. A lot of good characters don’t, like Bertha Jorkins, but that’s beside the point. The point that I want to make is that even though Ludo Bagman wasn’t considered important enough to be in the movie and only important enough to be in one book, his character taught us a lot about white male privilege, how far it can go, what it can lead to, and eventually, where it can turn into something deadly.
We meet Ludo Bagman at the Quidditch World Cup, which he has coordinated as the Head of Magical Games and Sports. He’s loud and genial, constantly bounces on the balls of his feet, and really only cares about excitement. Supposedly he’s worked hard to make the Quidditch World Cup happen, but it’s very obvious after about two pages that he hasn’t done all that much, leaving most of the work to people below him. We learn very quickly that he’s a former famous Quiddith player, a famed beater for the Wimbourne Wasps, who has ridden on his fame to become the Head of Magical Games and Sports. For someone who is in charge of an entire branch of government and who has spent months coordinating an international event where 100,000 wizards are gathered, Bagman is incredible blase about the whole affair, telling an irate Barty Crouch that the wizards who are using magic in front of Muggles are just “having a little fun”. It also doesn’t escape my notice that while 100,000 wizards have gathered and are showing off for one another in huge displays of magic that is not allowed, Bagman is shooting the breeze while everyone who works under him is running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to stop the magic.
I’m not sure how wizard sporting events differ from Muggle sporting events, but I’m pretty sure that it’s generally not a good idea to bet on a sporting event of which you are a coordinator. This doesn’t seem to matter to Bagman at all. The gold in his pocket that he keeps stirring around, letting everyone know that he’s rich, is all from betting on the Quidditch World Cup. The Weasley twins get in on a bet with him, and before Bagman leaves to commentate the match, he says multiple times to various people, “Fancy a flutter on the match?” Besides gold, he’s betting on shares of eel farms (I’m not sure I want to know) and other ventures. This will come up later.
The entirety of the Quidditch World Cup and Bagman’s part in it is very eye-opening to the type of person that Bagman is. And it’s not just that he’s betting on a match that is drawing in 100,000 people and that he’s coordinated. We learn that although he is fun, he is exciting, and that he seems like great company, he is also breathtaking incompetent. Whether this incompetence is an act, I have yet to figure out, but trust me, I’m working on it. After we find out that he’s hardly done any of the heavy lifting in coordinating the biggest event that his department ever sees, he is asked about his colleague, Bertha Jorkins, and her disappearance. As Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, it’s made clear that it is his job to coordinate the efforts for looking for her. Really, all he has to do is tell someone in another department that she hasn’t been to work for a few weeks after she went on vacation, but he has yet to do this. It’s very clear that the whole Ministry is aware that she is missing, because Arthur, all the way down in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, asks Bagman if he’s heard from Bertha. And what does Bagman say?
“Not a dicky bird,” Bagman says comfortably.
Comfortably is the word that struck me most. He’s not worried about her disappearance at all when clearly, other people in other departments who don’t even work with Bertha are. At this point, Bertha has been missing for weeks. When Barty Crouch shows up and Arthur asks whether or not he should be sending someone to look for her, Bagman’s “eyes widen innocently” as he shrugs it off, not bothering to use the manpower at his disposal to find a missing woman. Bagman explains that Bertha is stupid and has a bad memory and probably just got lost coming back from vacation. I have a bad memory and often don’t remember to put away my toothpaste, but I would have a difficult time getting lost on the way back from vacation. After Bagman leaves, Crouch wonders aloud how Bagman got to be the head of his department with his breathtaking stupidity, and I began to wonder the same. And if Bagman believes that a woman can get lost on her way back from vacation and that no one needs to look for her, then he thinks that everyone else is as stupid as he is.
What’s even more telling about Bagman’s blaring incompetence is after the Dark Mark is fired and everything goes sideways, he has no idea what’s going on. Bagman appears in the forest where Harry, Ron, and Hermione are hiding from the hordes of Death Eaters rampaging around and levitating Muggles and he has no idea that it’s even happening. It’s his event! He coordinated it! He is in charge! At this point the rampage has already been happening for a good half hour and top Ministry officials are trying to calm things down. Rita Skeeter is already writing for the Daily Prophet about the mayhem, and Bagman Apparates into the woods and learns about what’s happening from a trio of lost teenagers. Where has he been? What has been doing? As Hermione notes, “Not really on top of things, Bagman, is he?” How did a guy like this become the Head of Magical Games and Sports?
The answer is male privilege, particularly the kind that comes with fame. We see it all the time with celebrities. In this day and age, we’ve begun to hold famous people accountable for their actions, but we have to remember in this world, it is 1993–1994. After becoming a Quidditch player, no one has ever held him accountable for anything. It’s very reminiscent to me of Matthew Broderick, who if you didn’t know, killed someone in the 1990's and has had a happy career since. Bagman has coasted on his fame right up through the Ministry until he bagged the top job in the sports department, where his seemingly only qualifications are that he’s a former famous sports star and that he’s really good at commentating. And although Bagman is not an outright misogynist, it’s not lost on me that he doesn’t bother to use his privilege to find a seriously missing woman (whose missing status is gaining national attention) that he believes his incompetent.
Even more indicative of his privilege is the trial that Harry witnesses when he dives into Dumbledore’s Pensieve. Harry lands feet first in the courtroom where Bagman is being tried for passing information to a known Death Eater. Once again we see Bagman either being breathtaking stupid or pretending to be, claiming that he had no idea that his dad’s buddy was in with Voldemort. Bagman is at the height of his Quidditch fame at this point. As Harry has seen with other trials, convicted wizards sit in the chair with chains before the Wizengamot and the chains spring to life, wrapping themselves around the wizard. They don’t wrap themselves around Bagman, though. While he splutters innocently about how he doesn’t know anything (yeah, buddy, we know you don’t know anything about anything) the Wizengamot seems very excited to have him there. No one votes to convict him, and one of the witches on the Wizengamot actually stands up and wishes Bagman luck on his upcoming Quidditch match. He walks out of the trial to applause.
In true privilege fashion, Bagman gets to move right along after the disaster at the Quidditch World Cup. In fact, he moves right along into the Triwizard Tournament. No one ever looks at him and says, “Um, do you think that maybe the guy who had no idea what was going on with his own international event when it was ruined by Death Eaters and everyone ran in terror and it became world news should be like… hosting this event at Hogwarts this year?” If anybody said it, no one acted on it. As soon as we get to Hogwarts Bagman is there, once again bouncing on the balls of his feet, excited excited excited about the tournament that he’s somehow still in charge of. At least Barty Crouch is there most of the time to make up for his incompetence, but if we’re read the books, we know that he’s being controlled by Voldemort. At least he’s competent when he’s being controlled by Voldemort though, am I right?
Bagman’s main tasks when he’s at Hogwarts for the tournament are to tell the champions what their tasks are, to commentate, and to do press. It’s unclear what else he does. He doesn’t even fully understand the rules of the tournament that he’s in charge of. When Harry’s name comes out of the Goblet, he defers to Crouch about what to do. Crouch is part of the tournament representing the Department of International Magical Cooperation. He’s there to make sure that France and Bulgaria and England are getting along well. He also helps oversee the transfer of the magical creatures that are involved in the tournament, like the dragons and the sphinx, but he does that under the jurisdiction of Magical Games and Sports. So why does he know the rules better than Bagman? When it comes down to it, anything that remotely has to do with the tournament at the beginning of the book is deferred to Crouch when it really should be going to Bagman. The only reason why everything stops getting deferred to Crouch is because he goes missing. And Bagman doesn’t send anyone to look for him, either!
As the tournament continues, we are once again privy to Bagman’s illegal monetary habits. No one has held Bagman accountable for them so far, so why would anyone bat an eye that he’s trying to help Harry win the tournament? When Harry confronts him about it, he gets bashful and nervous, and Harry rightly doesn’t accept his help. At this point in the book it’s been six months since the Quiddith World Cup and we find out that Bagman still hasn’t sent anyone to look for Bertha Jorkins. Still. Harry is fourteen, going through the current worst year at school of his life, and even he’s like, “Hey man, don’t you think you should be looking for her? Like, seriously.” The fact that it’s been six months and everyone knows that it’s Bagman’s job to send someone to look for Bertha and he hasn’t done it and yet he still has a job is astounding.
What’s particularly troubling about Bagman’s seeming inability to look for Bertha Jorkins is the deeper implications of who Bertha is to the plot of the book. In the aftermath of the third task and Voldemort’s return to power, we learn that Bertha has been dead for quite a while, but not before she gave Voldemort important information regarding the Quidditch World Cup, the Triwizard Tournament, and the existence of Barty Crouch Jr. Although if Bagman had indeed sent someone to find her, they would have found that she was dead; she is dead before the book even really begins. But had he sent someone to find her, the Auror office, and Dumbledore particularly, could have worked to piece together what exactly had happened to her and why. Dumbledore is aware that Bertha disappeared near Albania, where Voldemort was rumored to be seen last. (This also makes me think about all of the things that Dumbledore knows but never acts on, but that’s for another time.) It may be unlikely that if Bagman had actually looked for Bertha that Voldemort’s return could’ve been stopped, but it certainly could have been significantly hindered.
So the real question is, if Bagman were a woman, or if Bagman were a person of color, would he still have a job? Would he have been convicted? Would he even have gotten a job at the Ministry and failed his way up to his current occupation? Would someone have bothered to follow up on why he never looked for Bretha Jorkins? I think we know the answer to that one.
What’s interesting about Bagman is that unlike most white male celebrities who have never been held accountable for anything, he actually does get his comeuppance at the end of the book. We learn that he has absolutely no money and he’s spent it all gambling. When Voldemort returns he runs, making Harry suspect that maybe he was involved in Death Eater stuff, but it comes to light that to make up for his debts, he put a big bet on Harry winning the tournament. (Again, the audacity of the coordinator of the entire thing to make a bet on one of the champions. I cannot handle it.) This huge bet, however, is not with wizards. It is with goblins. Throughout the entire series we know that goblins are sentient. They have jobs, families, houses. They have their own brand of magic. Bill Weasley works with them regularly. But even though they are just as competent as humans, they are not allowed to have wands, and they are considered to be less-than. They are Othered. In a world where wizards reign supreme, it is not the wizards who take down Bagman, exposing his incompetence and his privilege, it is the goblins, whom he believes are lesser. After losing the bet that Harry would win to the goblins, they run Bagman out of the country. In Bagman’s entire life he has never had to answer to anyone, and now, his entire world has fallen apart because of a group of beings that he believes are inferior.
It is rare that we get a story where the guy coasting by on his privilege gets it in the end. I doubt that the goblins killed Bagman trying to get their money; with their status, that could be disastrous for them. But I’m sure that if and when they caught with him, they exacted their revenge. For us, Bagman’s comeuppance is being taken out of the series. He has to run, and he has to run so far that he can’t ever come back and grace us with his presence. He has to leave his job, his life, his country, and in turn, the series itself. And after all of this, he probably still doesn’t understand why.
