Photo Credit: Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press
Disclaimer: For the conditions of this piece, I am not affiliated with any publication, publicist, or party. I do not know Johnny Depp nor Amber Heard nor any other person present throughout the course of their relationship personally, and I have not been approached by either party or their lawyers, at the time of this writing. I am writing this purely from a place of empathy, with the intent of showing the truth in a case in which the media has decided to be blatantly wrong about. This is my opinion, with all facts/documents/sources cited and presented so you can do your own research. You have every right to disagree with me, but you should not ignore concrete facts when they are presented. After all, what world would we live in if we didn’t listen to facts and jumped straight to conclusions? Oh wait…
I remember waiting in the checkout line at my local dollar store. It was after school, and my cotton school uniform shirt stuck to me like neoprene from the heat of a Florida afternoon. As I unloaded my armful of mini chip bags onto the counter, my hip pressed against my mother’s bright yellow shopping cart, I visually perused the small stand of magazines next to the cashier. The cover of one of them, People, which I usually write off as a tabloid, stood out to me: A young, blonde woman, with what looked like small red splotches on under her eye, a small cut on her chin, and a bruise on her lips. Johnny Depp & Amber Heard: Inside Their Toxic Marriage - Jealousy, Fights, and Accusations of Violence - Why they’re divorcing after 15 Months, the heading read, with a small close-up photo of the woman standing next to her husband. Next to the main image was a small caption that describes the photo as having been taken from a friend of Heard’s, of alleged violence by Depp in December of the previous year. I inspected it for a moment before helping my mother carry the grocery bags to the car, and on the short car ride home, I thought only of the bruised image of the woman I had now come to know as Amber Heard.
I was thirteen when I saw this photo. I was in seventh grade, and just happened to be going through an intense face of discovering social justice movements. My main concern was the equality of women and men, and understanding the very complex webs of power that allowed men to walk into doors that women had to claw and pry open. My understanding of the topic was albeit half-baked - limited to Tumblr quotes from females like Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Angela Davis, Rowan Blanchard’s critique of “white feminism”, and drawings with small quotes like “Equal Pay Everyday” and “Fries before Guys”. So, naturally, I believed Heard’s claims, and the media that spoon-fed me the idea.
I actively advocated against Johnny Depp, telling my friends that he deserved to be fired from his role of Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts films (the very thing that caused me to write this), and mindlessly repeating a tweet I had seen that criticized the irresponsibility of the organizers of San Diego Comic-Con that year for just allowing “poor” Heard to be in the same buildings as her alleged abuser.
As time passed, and I got occupied with school and friendships and other things, I truly forgot about the situation. Because I wasn’t so deeply convinced of his guilt, I would still watch Depp’s movies, occasionally. It was last year in my Orchestra class that we watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean movies to study the movie’s musical score, after I had mentioned to the teacher that I had never seen it. I was instantly captivated by the mannerisms and uniqueness of Jack Sparrow. I opened Twitter one day to see if Johnny Depp had an official social media account, and was hit in the face with the audio recording of him and Amber, that was newly released by the Daily Mail. I plugged in my headphones and listened to the clips, of which none seemed to be doctored by his team, since all of the audio was clear and flowed like a normal conversation.
I listened with tears welling up in my eyes as I was made to witness a man being puppeteer by a woman who has little to no regard for his feelings, twisting words that he had just said into malicious lies that painted him out to be the instigator that deserved her physical fights (which she admits to starting). I’ll link one of the conversations here so you can listen, if you have not heard it yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aca0KWoHtqQ
Let me write it here, clearly, so you can all understand it: Johnny Depp is a victim of Domestic Abuse at the hands of Amber Heard.
He shouldn’t have had to live off of the breadcrumbs of her affection, which she choose when and where to sprinkle, when his entire being is malnourished, beaten, and bruised.
I want every single person to know that this entire situation is not love:
- Purposefully seeking out someone because of their fame and financial situation, intensely researching their hobbies, clothing style, past interests/lovers in order to become a clone of them, giving them the illusion of familiarity is not love.
- Refusing to sign a prenuptial agreement and throwing a fit about the situation is not love.
- Coercing your partner in to marriage, and later claiming it was their idea to build this “foundation” is not love
- Defecating in your partner’s bed is not love.
- Forcing yourself into a situation where your partner requires a medical leave as they are detoxing from a drug they have been addicted to their whole life, convincing them to leave the trained medical professionals, to instead take you with them, to withhold the medications that he needed, is not love.
- Beating, hitting, punching, throwing things at, or hurting your partner when you are having a discussion or an argument as a couple is not love
- Blaming your actions of physical assaulting the one you love on anyone but yourself is not love
- Throwing a bottle of liquor at your partner’s hand, therefore shattering the bone and cutting the tip of their finger off is not love.
- Spending countless years physically, mentally, and emotionally abusing a person as your personal punching bag, while running back in the morning to apologize and gaslight them into thinking you had a reason for your abuse, because you profit off of their fame, status, and money, is not love.
Every real incident I have mentioned happened above behind closed doors, in the bubble of Depp and Heard’s inner circle, including the friends, property managers, doctors, (most of whom have testified under oath about Amber’s abusive tendencies). Now, the curtain has been pulled back prematurely; there was no time to set the stage with the correct props, and the actors are all scrambling to recollect the lines of what they’d lived (some written for them by outside hands), all for a show in front of the biggest audience they’ll ever perform for: the court of public opinion.
Let’s look at this from an outsider’s perspective: An actress with a handful of movie and tv roles under her belt, married to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood? Claiming domestic violence? And this entire story coinciding with the #MeToo movement? To the media, this sounds like the perfect recipe for a total takedown of their hated “rich cis straight white male” archetype. To Heard, and her team of publicists, this sounds like the most salacious way to morph the story into one that directly benefits her.
What happens when a fox sneaks into the hen house? The hens rally around the fox to protect it from the person trying to stop it from eating the other hens.
You can see it in the support Heard immediately received from the likes of Amanda de Cadenet, one of the founders of the #MeToo movement, who seemed to know the truth all along and only withdrew support to save her own skin.
You can see it in the language of the headlines, the words they choose that trap Depp in the label of being a misogynistic wife abuser, while Heard is a free bird who has flittered away from any negative connotation she may face.
You can see it in the photos they use of Heard, professionally taken and beautifully edited, while Depp’s show him tired, overweight, and from a highly unflattering angle.
You can see it in the court drawings from the Depp vs The Sun case, in which Heard is depicted as an angelic figure, her features small and delicate with light seeming to radiate around her entire being, while Depp is a darkly colored, sickly-looking, shadowy figure in the background.
You can see it in the way none of the big media outlets that ran with Heard’s domestic abuse claims, as well as have published an apology to Depp after the truth has seen the light and the public’s opinion has swayed.
You can even see it in the words of the judge who has personal connections to people on Heard’s legal team, who believed one woman’s under-oath testimony over countless hours of security footage, voice tapes, and documented bruises.
As a consumer of entertainment culture, you are being very purposefully manipulated into believing one narrative/idea of the "truth".
In a separate tape, Heard is recorded saying “Go on, go and tell the world ‘I, Johnny Depp, I am a victim of domestic abuse,’ and see who believes you.”
Well, here I am to tell you that though every major media network does not… I do.
I, at least, hope to be a journalist on the right side of history, unbound by the chains of any sort of political bias. I am proud to support a man who, even through his struggles with his own demons, has maintained his roots in authenticity - even when his entire reputation has been dragged through the mud.
At the moment of this writing, Johnny Depp has lost the defamation trial against the Sun after they referred to him as a "wife beater". Johnny Depp has announced this morning that he has been asked by Warner Brothers to resign from his iconic role of Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts series. Amber Heard is still employed by Warner Brothers, as the leading role of Mera in Aquaman 2. The lack of justice from Hollywood is not surprising, but shows the shallow moral values of a town made with a facade of liberty.
If you would, please consider signing the petition to have him recasted (http://chng.it/CmSgFX5hhn), and please spread #JusticeforJohnnyDepp as far as you can. If any man deserves peace, it’s Johnny, and the thousands if not millions of men who have had to suffer domestic abuse in silence.
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