Opinions
Johnny Depp, Amber Heard and the deeply unsatisfying matter of re-litigating their trial
The series was panned by critics
On Aug. 16, Netflix released a three-part docuseries revisiting last summer’s televised civil litigation over allegations that Amber Heard had defamed ex-husband Johnny Depp by claiming to have survived sexual violence and domestic abuse during their four-year relationship.
Rather than offering anything new by way of insight or analysis from anyone with relevant qualifications or experience, each episode features clips from some of the online “creators” who turned their hot takes on the trial into a veritable cottage industry of amateur legal commentary and courtroom conspiracy theories, feeding the rapacious demand for anti-Heard and pro-Depp content. (As if to underscore the project’s unseriousness, these included a men’s rights YouTuber who wore a Deadpool mask and was surrounded by Spider-Man costumes.)
Worse still, “Depp v. Heard” director Emma Cooper fails not only to answer but also to even ask the obvious questions that have lingered since a verdict was returned more than 14 months ago by seven jurors in northern Virginia who were not sequestered as the case became, by far, the most popular topic on social media and online platforms.
At the same time, however, the episodes include footage of courtroom testimony that offer a glimpse, though incomplete, into some of the trial’s more salient and dispositive moments that I otherwise would never have seen (with neither the time nor the inclination, either last year or now, to follow 120+ hours of argument by the parties presented over the course of a seven-week trial.)
Do these scenes redeem the series? Hardly. But that does not mean they offer nothing of value, especially considering that while this was not the retelling of last summer’s events that we deserve, it remains the only one we’ve got. At least, for now.
Susan Sontag, in her 1977 collection of essays “On Photography,” proclaimed “The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”
In “Depp v. Heard,” the cameras facilitate a very specific kind of tourism that feels both exploitative and voyeuristic, because the reality in which we find ourselves trespassing is dark: the unraveling of a relationship between movie stars through patterns of dysfunction and abuse both familiar and alien, knowable and unknowable, like a city you have visited but never called home.
Especially when coupled with the more outrageous moments from trial that made headlines at the time – such as the debate over whether Heard defecated on Depp’s bed and blamed his teacup Yorkshire Terrier – there is a temptation to treat footage of testimony concerning the smashing of liquor bottles and hurling of wine glasses, the shoving and taunting and threats, even the physical and sexual violence, as though it were pure spectacle.
However, this would suggest, wrongly, that the painful realities of the actors’ relationship are so far removed from our lived experiences that we do not, cannot, or should not relate to them. As if a seven-week trial adjudicating the conflicts in our own intimate relationships or those involving the people we love would not turn up evidence of trouble and dysfunction, or worse.
Considering that we are primed to pick winners and losers and heroes and villains, perhaps it was unsurprising that incomplete and selectively edited footage from the case provided ample fodder for Instagram reels and TikTok videos that were created in the service of narratives that, most often, favored Depp and vilified Heard.
For me, witnessing these scenes in their proper context revealed a picture so much more complicated and, frankly, ugly that the prospect of framing the case in this manner seemed as preposterous as the idea that audiences leaving a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” should find themselves allied with either Martha or George.
To take just one example: From the witness stand, Heard recounted how she would often return home to their shared Los Angeles penthouse to find Depp nodding off in a chair because he had washed Roxicodone down with whiskey, or lying supine on the sofa fully unconscious with melted ice cream pooled in his lap. Worried about her husband’s apparent substance use disorder and unsure how best to help, the actress admitted she would sometimes take photos of him and share the pictures with a trusted friend.
Or, Depp’s attorney asked, was she just trying to humiliate him? Or, online commentators asked (often rhetorically), was this a calculated and premeditated move to collect evidence she would use against Depp in litigation or for purposes of extorting him?
As if these motives are mutually exclusive.
Having experienced the pain of watching loved ones spiraling in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction, I can tell you why I suspect Heard took the photos, but of course the reality is neither I nor anyone else – perhaps not even she – has any clue.
Last year, so much of the online noise about the trial came from content creators who made specious arguments to poke holes in the credibility of Heard’s testimony or alleged ulterior, sinister hidden motives based on the actress’s countenance, demeanor, speech, and other behavior.
For example, in clips that were often selectively edited or presented outside of their proper context, Heard might have seemed to cry more hysterically upon realizing the cameras were trained on her, which were used as supposed proof that her claims of suffering abuse at the hands of her ex-husband must therefore be fabricated.
Watching the footage in the manner presented on screen in “Depp v. Heard,” it becomes even more obvious how silly these interpretations were. In reality, of course, no one – not even police officers, trial court judges, F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents, trial lawyers or forensic psychiatrists – can reliably spot when someone is lying to them.
However convincing some YouTuber may have been, and however comforting the idea that we are able to see through the lies of others, I’m sorry to tell you the research on this is overwhelming and uncontested.
As Malcolm Gladwell observes in “Talking to Strangers,” Amanda Knox was falsely convicted for a murder she did not commit because “much of the prosecution’s case…rested on the allegedly strange, guilty behavior she exhibited,” which “the public deemed not in line with typical responses to grief and trauma.”
The cameras did not tell the complete story.
Well before 2022, private details about Depp and Heard’s troubled relationship had spilled onto the pages of tabloids like The Sun, which called Depp a “wife beater” in a 2018 story alleging that “overwhelming evidence was filed to show Johnny Depp engaged in domestic violence against his wife.” After he sued the paper for defamation, London’s High Court of Justice ruled against the actor in 2020, concluding the claims at issue were “substantially true.”
Still, last summer’s litigation between the actors earned far more public attention and unearthed far more (and far more titillating) private information, causing, therefore, far more damage than the supermarket rags and gossip blogs – as well as, ironically, the financial and reputational damage resulting from the very defamation claims that were adjudicated at trial.
As a reminder, Depp sued his ex-wife for a 2018 opinion article in the Washington Post in which she had written, “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” Heard was referencing the backlash against, essentially, identical claims she made in a statement after securing a restraining order against Depp following their divorce in 2016. (“During the entirety of our relationship, Johnny has been verbally and physically abusive to me,” she wrote.)
In so many cases including this one, intimate partner abuse is messy. An audio recording of one of the couple’s arguments shows Heard acknowledging she had struck her ex-husband but denying that she punched him. Her testimony, meanwhile, detailed serious violent crimes, including that Depp had thrown her into a ping pong table and repeatedly hit her in the face before sexually assaulting her with a liquor bottle that may have been broken.
Of course, assuming their sworn testimony to be true, it must also be said, domestic violence is a gendered crime. And the imbalanced power dynamics within their relationship put Heard at a disadvantage, including in this respect. While both are famous actors, the wealth, power, and fame wielded by Depp was then (and remains, now) much greater.
The disparity was evident from the outset. In the Netflix series, throngs of fans are shown cheering the Pirates of the Caribbean star and booing Heard on the first day they were sighted arriving separately to the Fairfax County Circuit Court. Meanwhile, online, evidence of a sustained and coordinated character assassination of Heard had just begun to emerge.
The smear campaign would persist through the trial and beyond. The actress was called a manipulative liar, a gold digger, an abuser, a violent psychopath, a drug addict, and worse. Some of the most outrageous claims were among the most widely circulated: She snorted cocaine on the witness stand, killed her own mother to conceal testimony that would have exonerated Depp, plagiarized lines from the film The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Creators mocked Heard by lip-synching over audio of her testimony about suffering violent abuse in videos that went viral on TikTok along with hashtags like #JusticeForJohnnyDepp, which was seen nearly 3 billion times on the platform. (#justiceforamberheard earned just 25 million views.) One-sided articles and videos, many containing false and misleading claims, were promoted by Ben Shapiro’s conservative media outlet The Daily Wire through its estimated $35,000 and $47,000 purchase of Facebook and Instagram ads.
“Depp v. Heard” was panned by critics.
“If ever a true-crime documentary needed the usual collection of talking-head interviews with esteemed journalists, law enforcement veterans and legal experts to put things in perspective,” Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun Times wrote, “this is it — but that never happens.”
Others, like CNN’s Brian Lowry, agreed: “How much is gained from listening to a guy in a Deadpool mask offering extensive trial takes is a question ‘Depp v. Heard’ should have contemplated and apparently didn’t,” he wrote.
Several reviews added that part of the problem was that not nearly enough time had elapsed between the events and their retelling. Bustle’s Scaachi Koul pointed to other recent projects involving the private lives of public figures (especially women) that, with sufficient space and distance, found new and interesting things to say about their subjects and opportunities to tell their stories anew.
Ryan White’s excellent documentary “Pamela: A Love Story,” which was released by Netflix in January, manages to find plenty of material about actress and model Pamela Anderson along with the broader sociocultural forces of the 90s and early aughts that helped shape – and were shaped by – the era’s most enduring sex symbol.
The film would have been nothing, however, without Anderson. Listening to her tell her own story, one realizes how poorly suited everyone else was to the task – particularly the leering talk show hosts and journalists who treated her as nothing more than a sex object.
And maybe that, above all else, is the lesson to be gleaned from “Depp v. Heard”: Let’s come back to this story, sure, when we’re ready to cut through the bullshit, reframe the conversation away from the “him vs. her” framing, stop relying on provably unreliable evidence, and consider the broader context of their relationship and the impact of the trial that happened on TikTok and YouTube. And let’s definitely listen to Heard if and when she’s ready to talk about this again.
Until we get that docuseries (or documentary, scripted series, film, book, whatever), I fear everything else will be deeply unsatisfactory and unsatisfying.
Opinions
Barney Frank’s powerful legacy for LGBTQ federal employees
The ‘Great Gay Communicator’ deserves respect
Former Congressman Barney Frank, who died last week, was dogged during his life over being gay. The self-proclaimed only “left-handed, gay, Jewish congressman,” in Congress deserved better.
Frank’s perseverance paved the way for others. With wit and intelligence, he helped educate Americans about sexuality. As a federal employee and a member of the Federal Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees (GLOBE), a government-wide organization founded by Dr. Len Hirsch, I saw Frank’s unforgettable speaking style when he was a guest speaker at our monthly events.
Frank’s detailed presentations about federal employment policies were not recorded. The only record of them, edited by Dr. Hirsch and other members of the GLOBE board, is in the minutes of the GLOBE meetings. I held several positions in GLOBE, including secretary, assistant newsletter editor, and as an elected member of the board. I drafted the minutes of the meetings.
GLOBE’s minutes were edited to protect the identity of federal employees. This was important because then-U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) attempted to obtain the minutes. Helms felt LGBT advocacy in the federal workplace was an illegal form of political activity. GLOBE was also concerned that the minutes would be illegally accessed and forwarded to Helms or used to blackmail federal employees. GLOBE’s minutes are preserved at the National Archives.
When I was named Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Program Manager at the Department of Agriculture in 1993, I immediately notified Frank’s office of my appointment. After a federal newsletter published an article about a speech I gave, Helms accused me of using government resources to support “a homosexual agenda.” During several hours on the evening of July 19, 1994, Helms told the Senate and C-SPAN’s television audience that LGBT federal employees had their minds in their crotches. He called LGBT federal employees “perverts.”
Helms had government documents that described the position of “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Program Manager.” It was a program that used the incendiary words “promote” and “recruit” homosexuals. It was a huge mistake for government bureaucrats to have written such a program. Helms published it in the Congressional Record. Frank helped us through this battle and others.
Aside from Frank, there were other LGBT members of Congress in the 1990s. Gerry Studds (D-Mass.), Steve Gunderson (R-Wisc.), and James Kolbe (R-Ariz.). Studds was censured for an affair with a 17-year-old male page in the House. Gunderson was publicly outed by a fellow House Republican. Kolbe was subject to sexual accusations.
Among these gay congressmen, Frank weathered a hostile media, personal scandal, and vicious attacks from his Republican colleagues. In 1995, former Texas GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey was caught referring to Frank as “Barney Fag.” His apology was grudging.
“I rule out that it was an innocent mispronunciation,” responded Frank. “I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”
After celebrating his 72nd birthday, Frank married his longtime partner. He successfully worked to place marriage equality into the 2012 Democratic platform, which President Obama endorsed.
Still, Frank was dogged by homophobia. The Tea Party’s Doug Mainwaring called Frank’s wedding “a mockery, a parody, a staggering caricature of the most fundamental and towering of American institutions.”
In an interview with Washingtonian magazine, Frank said he “hates being classified as ‘the gay congressman,’” as his legislative accomplishments go beyond gay rights. He co-sponsored the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Frank will especially be remembered in Washington for his sharp wit. He once referred to advocating for gay marriage legalization as “cruising for gay rights.” He wrote devastatingly funny op-ed pieces, notably for the Washington Post.
Though Frank may not have wanted to be known as a gay congressman, when he spoke, the LGBT community listened. He was the Great Gay Communicator. Barney Frank deserved respect. May his memory be a blessing.
James Patterson, a life member of the American Foreign Service Association, is a writer and communications consultant in the D.C. area.
If I admit I’m HIV positive, some men immediately reject me. If I lie and say I’m HIV negative, many of those same men will gladly have unprotected sex with me.
That contradiction has haunted me for years and made me wonder: What would the gay men who died of AIDS in the 1980s think if they could see us now?
The future would absolutely astonish them. Everybody carries around a handheld device that can instantly broadcast their thoughts, faces, bodies, and lives to the entire planet. We elected a Black president twice. Same-sex marriage is legal. Gay people can openly marry, raise children, grow old together, and even get divorced like everybody else. HIV itself is no longer “the deadly disease” it was when I learned I was infected in 1985 at age 23.
Back then, life expectancy was often measured in months. Surviving long enough to grow old felt like science fiction.
Now there are medications that can suppress the virus so effectively, a person living with HIV can become “undetectable,” meaning they cannot sexually transmit the virus. Countless people who once expected to die can now live long enough to worry about all the ordinary things people worry about as they age: heart disease, bad knees and what restaurant closes too early.
Back then, that wasn’t even a pipe dream. But the future also got weird.
What shocks me most is not the medical progress. It’s the emotional contradiction surrounding it. The general public no longer fears sharing space with people living with HIV. Most people understand you cannot get HIV from a hug, a handshake, sharing food, breathing the same air, or sitting next to someone on a plane.
But sex is different. Especially in the gay world, where stigma still lingers in strange and contradictory ways.
I’ve watched gay men reject HIV-positive men while simultaneously engaging in anonymous unprotected sex with people whose status they know only because somebody typed a word into an app. “Negative.” “Clean.” “DDF.”
As if viruses never lie.
At the same time, we now live in a sexual culture far more open and visible than anything most gay people from the 1980s could have imagined. The bathhouse has largely been replaced by hookup apps and social media. Sexual behavior is documented, broadcast and archived in real time.
But greater sexual freedom did not necessarily bring greater emotional clarity.
Some men still fear HIV intensely. Others eroticize it. Some even document their attempts to acquire it.
We solved the medical crisis of HIV far faster than we solved the psychological, emotional and sexual contradictions surrounding it.
As a long-term survivor, I sometimes feel like a time traveler trapped between two worlds: one that remembers the terror and one that barely remembers the war.
That feeling became the seed for my new novel,“The Unfrozen Few.” I imagined a group of AIDS patients from the late 1980s choosing cryogenic freezing rather than death, only to wake up in present-day America. They emerge into a world of smartphones, same-sex marriage, social media and medical breakthroughs, but also into a world that still doesn’t fully know what to do with people living with HIV.
In many ways, the frozen few are simply long-term survivors with the volume turned all the way up.
I think the dead would be amazed by how far we’ve come. And stunned by the ways we still haven’t.
Randy Boyd is a longtime HIV survivor, five-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and author of five novels, including ‘The Unfrozen Few,’ a speculative series about AIDS patients who were cryogenically frozen in the 1980s and awaken in present-day America. More information is available at randyboydauthor.com.
Opinions
Dual endorsement for Independent Council-at-large: Patterson or Crawford
Let’s move the District forward
(Editor’s note: This column reflects the writer’s opinion and does not constitute a Washington Blade endorsement of any candidate.)
The race for Independent Council-at-Large is interesting. There are three main candidates and I suggest making your choice easier by first eliminating Elissa Silverman from consideration. She is a retread, and it is time to move forward, not backward.
There are two candidates whom I have taken the time to talk with in some depth. They are both impressive, and either will make a great addition to the D.C. Council. I have some minor issues with both, but then have never found a candidate who I would agree with 100%, and never expect to.
Jacque Patterson has held public office, and served the community well, as president of the D.C. State Board of Education. Just recently a study was released, and while we know there are many outstanding issues in our schools, this new Education Scorecard report from Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth, ranks District of Columbia students first in the nation for academic growth in both math and reading between 2022 and 2025. While they are still not doing as well as we want all our students to do, progress is important, and this scorecard shows how the District is working to help its students. Take a look at Jacque’s website to see what he will focus on. You will find it impressive. He understands among other issues what small businesses mean to D.C., what we need to do for safer communities, and to provide more opportunities for all our youth.
Then take a look at Doni Crawford who has now been serving on the Council for about four months, having been chosen to replace Kenyan McDuffie until the election, when he resigned to run for mayor. She previously worked in his office as committee director for the Council’s Committee on Business and Economic Development. Prior to that she worked at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute. Her focus is also on safer communities, economic development, housing, and youth. You can look at Doni’s website to get a more detailed understanding of where she intends to focus her time.
Both candidates have talked about how they will work to fight for D.C. statehood, and to ensure the 700,000 residents of the District can set their own budget priorities, and make their own legislative decisions, without oversight from Congress.
When looking at who you choose to vote for as a Council member in D.C., it is important to understand the person you select will be working closely with 12 other members. They have to understand the art of compromise to get their initiatives passed. They must have the personality that will demand respect of the other members, and a style that will make them stand out on the Council. I think Jacque and Doni are the two choices in this Independent Council-at-large race who will be able to do that. Also, remember in an at-large seat on the Council the focus is a little different than when you are selecting a Council member for your own ward. These members need to have a little broader view, and be able to balance all constituents in every ward of the city. That is a little more difficult.
I know from talking with them that both Jacque and Doni are committed to equality, and just as important, economic equality. They understand for the District to do well; everyone needs a fair playing field. I have gotten the strong feeling they both understand what is happening around the nation is impacting the people of D.C. That includes the resurgence of antisemitism, as well as racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and sexism. They understand we are faced with a White House, and Republican-controlled Congress, who instead of doing anything to combat these issues, are making them worse. And because home rule still gives Congress and the felon in the White House much-too-much control over D.C., this impacts us directly. I have confidence in both Patterson and Crawford, that they will fight this, and do it intelligently, and successfully, to the benefit of all the people they are looking to serve.
So, my recommendation is you look at both their websites and decide who your first choice will be. Then rank that person #1 on your ballot for Independent Council-at-large. Then because you can with ranked choice voting, rank the other one #2. Then stop! You don’t need to rank any more.
Again, I think either Jacque Patterson or Doni Crawford will serve us well on the Council. They are both smart, experienced, and both will bring something new to the Council. Elissa Silverman had her chance before, and there were reasons the voters turned her out. Let’s not go backwards, but rather let’s move the District forward, with either Jacque Patterson or Doni Crawford.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
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