In a narrow legal sense, Depp and Heard each sued each other for defamation. But I don’t really care about how many millions of dollars these multi-millionaires were judged to owe each other, and I suspect no one else really does either.
In a larger sense, the trial became a referendum on their overall relationship and each of their characters. In an even larger sense, it was about the #MeToo movement generally.
In its largest sense? This trial was about the relationship between men and women in American society, period. And the verdict in this largest case is the most bleak.
The trial evidence was voluminous over the course of a grueling 6 weeks and hours upon hours of testimony. It devolved into a “he-said, she-said” knife-fight. And when it is “he-said, she-said,” our default assumption as a society seems to be that *he* is telling the truth. By muddying the waters of this trial, Depp’s lawyers leaned into that assumption — and were rewarded for it. That’s not what “he-said, she-said” means, though. It means that either he or she *could* be telling the truth, and we have to drill down and find out.
Personally, I spent very little time watching either of them testify. They are both actors, which is to say, more darkly, that they are both professional manipulators of human emotion. Entertaining, no doubt, but not the best place to start.
Instead, I focused on the external evidence, which doesn’t require making any credibility judgments between either of them. To wit:
—The horrific, abusive text messages Depp wrote about Heard (wanting to f**k the charred remains of her corpse, etc.);
—The third-party witnesses who testified as to instances of Depp’s abuse of Heard;
—The physical evidence of Depp’s devastation of Heard’s property.
Do I believe Heard is telling the entire, unembellished truth? No. Do I believe Depp is telling the entire, unembellished truth? Hell no. They are both shading things in their favor. But the picture that emerges is that Depp was driving the abuse in the relationship, and to the extent Heard retaliated, it was in defense. Sadly, her failure to behave as a “perfect victim” was fatal to her standing, among the general public unfamiliar with the dynamics of abuse.
No, Heard was not a perfect victim in this. No one is. But she was *still a victim* — and now, re-victimized by her abuser in the most public way imaginable.
Depp is a shitbag, Heard a flawed victim, but the real losers of this are us.
Caption this Meme 