The trial involving Johnny Depp and Amber Heard – currently playing out in a Fairfax County courtroom in all its sordid, violent, frequently contradictory detail – is technically about defamation. The central question is whether Heard defamed her ex-husband Depp when she wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in 2018 which did not name him, but implied she was a victim of domestic abuse.
However, the issues involved are much more high stakes than simple defamation in a divided and increasingly reactionary America. The trial has ignited debate about domestic violence, addiction, toxic relationships, the myth of the perfect victim and how the public chooses who to believe in a post-MeToo world.
Despite the distressing and graphic nature of the evidence, many of the spectating public regard this as live entertainment on a scale not seen since the trial of OJ Simpson – some have even been turning up to court in Pirates of the Caribbean costumes.
There is a sense they have been given the opportunity to choose between conflicting narratives. Do you choose the storyline about the “good man who snapped” and the unreliable, scheming woman who “drove him to it”? Do you see this as a straightforward story of domestic abuse – if so, who is the victim? Will you opt for a narrative involving some demented hybrid of the two, a version in which each party is both abuser and victim?
Whatever you think about Depp vs Heard, one truth is unavoidable. Nobody knows exactly what happened between them, yet it is only Heard who is being stripped to the bones by a rabid online mob
Reading the transcripts of evidence this week, it seems that nobody outside of Depp and Heard – and maybe not even them – can be absolutely certain where the whole truth lies. She has accused him of egregious abuse, including sexual assault with a glass bottle.
He says he never hit her; that she is the abuser. When the actors reached a divorce settlement in 2016, they issued a joint statement which seemed to acknowledge there was more than one way of seeing things. On the one hand, it stated, “there was never an intent of physical or emotional harm”.
But wait, there’s more. “Neither party has made false accusations for financial gains”. So neither of them was abusive, at least not intentionally. But if Heard wasn’t lying for financial gain when she said Depp was, then who is telling the truth?
An alarming number of people are convinced they know. The verdict on social media and in the court of public opinion is almost unanimous. Depp is telling the truth. Heard is a liar. It may be a crude measure, but on TikTok, the hashtag #justiceforjohnnydepp has 8.1 billion views; #justiceforamberheard has 29 million and most of the content on that seems to be in support of Depp. Images from the courtroom are pored over for evidence of whether those are crocodile tears. Her words are parsed for inconsistencies. Psychologists are dragged out on morning TV shows to ask the big questions: what does it mean that she keeps looking at the jury? Why is she offering so many details?
The most interesting question is not which version reflects reality – speculation is unwise when the case is under way – but why so many people believe they have the answer.
Part of it is that Depp is the bigger star. Part of it is that Heard does not fit the mould of the “perfect victim”. She is too complex, too poised, too edgy. But most significantly, I suspect this a reaction to the MeToo and BelieveWomen movements. What is playing out in court is payback for the misguided idea that the word of all women, at all times, is to be believed over that of any man, regardless of the circumstances. This may have started as a well-intentioned effort to support victims, but it is ludicrous to suggest that women are incapable of lying or manipulation. As we’re now seeing, it has done women few favours.
American women are already discovering what it means when your own society does not trust you, does not believe you and does not regard you as worthy of protection
Whatever you think about Depp vs Heard, one truth is unavoidable. Nobody knows exactly what happened between them, yet it is only Heard who is being stripped to the bones by a rabid online mob.
It is no coincidence that this is playing out at a time when there are powerful forces in America who apparently see The Handmaid’s Tale not as a dystopian work of fiction but as a blueprint for society.
As Heard gave evidence just hours after the publication of a leaked supreme court opinion that moves to row back abortion rights, events inside and outside the courtroom seemed to reflect one another through a nightmarish looking glass.
What hope has any victim of alleged abuse of being believed, when the highest court in the United States has declared that women are not to be trusted? If Justice Samuel Alito's 98-page draft opinion is eventually handed down, about half of US states are expected to ban or severely limit abortion.
That this can happen under a Democratic administration in a country where one in four women make the decision to end a pregnancy, and 60 per cent of US adults support their right to do so, is hard to comprehend.
The message from the court is clear. Women’s right to autonomy exists only as long as they are good and chaste and subservient, as long as they are not messy, not difficult, not victims of abuse, don’t get inconveniently pregnant when men have sex with them, are not too poor to be able to travel, don’t demand control over their own bodies or futures.
The filleting of Heard in the court of public opinion came a whisker too late to be a cautionary tale. American women are already discovering what it means when your own society does not trust you, does not believe you and does not regard you as worthy of protection.