Public Health Policy Reviews 43:
VALKYRIES 4 – Amber Heard, Feminism, and the High Price of Fame.
“She began to be jealous without any cause, expected him to devote his whole attention to her, found fault with everything and made coarse and ill-mannered scenes” -Leo Tolstoy – The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886).
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Legendary Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) wrote his classic novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) to encourage readers to self-reflect on the spiritual side of human life.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is about a man, Ivan Ilyich, who has a spiritual awakening as he lies on his deathbed. It deals with the vacuous sensibilities of people who care about nothing other than social climbing and class status.
In Tolstoy’s tale, Mr. Ilyich and the rich people around him struggle to maintain privilege and their assumptions of superiority over poor people. As he lies dying on this deathbed, Mr. Ilyich becomes aware that his life of obsequious loyalty to people of a higher social class has been empty. He thinks when he was “alive,” he may as well have been dead.
Ivan Ilyich’s final statement to himself is, “Death is finished…It is no more!” This paradoxical statement reflects the emptiness of his life.
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Johnny Depp and Amber Heard arrived at their film’s European premiere, “The Rum Diary,” in London, England in 2011. Photo courtesy of www.ndtv.com.
We cannot think of many better allegories to the sad saga of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard legal dispute than The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
People find the Depp—Heard saga compelling because it is all about social hierarchy. In Johnny Depp, we have a wealthy man from humble working-class origins who built his fortune upon the foundation of his former status as a teen celebrity heartthrob. It is the quintessential “rags to riches” story.
Similarly, Amber Heard constructed her stardom from middle-class Texas and Catholic roots via a dogged determination to become a Hollywood star. But cue the Shakespearian aphorism, “All that glitters is not gold.”
After Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were involved in a civil legal dispute and a media war lasting over six years, their mainstream acting careers disintegrated. The feminist “Me Too” movement also profoundly affected a domestic clash that spanned two continents and cost over $5 million in legal fees.
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Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. Image courtesy of Twitter.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient. – Romans 1 King James Version with Strong’s Dictionary (KJV).
Ms. Heard and Mr. Depp first met in 2009.
The two actors eventually married in February 2015. Heard and Depp divorced in 2016, but Ms. Heard eventually published an opinion column in The Washington Post claiming to be a victim of sexual violence and domestic abuse in December 2018.
After The Sun tabloid labeled Depp a “wife-beater” and called for his removal from author JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts film series in an April 2018 article, Mr. Depp sued British publishers the News Group Newspapers (NGN), the parent company of The Sun, for libel in June 2018.
Although Amber Heard’s Washington Post opinion article did not mention Mr. Depp’s name, the former Pirates of the Caribbean actor subsequently filed a suit against his ex-wife for defamation in the US in February 2019. News Group Newspapers eventually prevailed in the 2021 UK trial over Depp, leading many legal experts to assume that Ms. Heard had a great chance of winning in the 2022 American trial.
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Johnny Depp and Amber Heard during the 2020 UK civil trial. Image: inforrm.org.
Mr. Depp tried to challenge the 2020 court ruling against him in the British Court of Appeal.
However, a UK judge refused his application in 2021, saying Depp’s appeal had no real prospect of success. After Johnny Depp’s loss and failed appeal in the UK courts, Amber Heard asked the Virginia civil court to dismiss Depp’s civil case in the US.
But Judge Penney Azcarate, who presided over the US lawsuit, rejected Heard’s request. Judge Azcarate said that libel laws in the US are sufficiently different from those in the British civil court system. Thus, Azcarate ruled dismissing Depp’s lawsuit in the US could set a bad precedent for the future.
After a raucous three-month internationally televised trial held in Fairfax County, Virginia, from April 11 to June 1, 2022, a jury ruled that Amber Heard’s op-ed references to “sexual violence” and “domestic abuse” were false and maliciously defamed Johnny Depp.
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A collage of photos released by Amber Heard after her claims of domestic abuse against Johnny Depp. Image courtesy: India.com.
Depp was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages from Heard.
The court eventually reduced Mr. Depp’s damages because of a punitive damage limit imposed by Virginia state law. The Virginia Depp–Heard jury also ruled that one of Johnny Depp’s former lawyers, Adam Waldman, defamed Amber Heard. She was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and $0 in punitive damages from Depp.
The epigraph of the Heard – Depp saga is that a powerful White female actress and social media influencer allowed anger, hubris, and greed to lead her toward social decisions that ultimately destroyed her career. However, the storyline of the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp legal chronicle certainly did not start that way.
Ms. Heard aggressively adopted feminist ideals and aligned herself with the “MeToo” and “Black Lives Matter” movements in response to the negative press the actress began experiencing in 2018.
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Photo by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash.
Amber Heard’s Washington Post column heavily promoted the #MeToo movement.
The “Me-Too” and “Times Up” movements manifested in 2017 after news reports of sexual abuse by American film producer Harvey Weinstein. While “MeToo” focuses on advocacy against rape and sexual assault, “Time Up” promotes gender equity in the workplace and creates equal economic opportunities for people of color.
Both feminist movements – along with the radical Black Lives Matter movement – have now lost all cultural momentum after an incessant hammering from conservative media outlets, Republican Party (GOP) politicians, and right-wing activists over the past eight years. Yet, in 2018, Amber Heard transformed into the beautiful international celebrity face of female advocacy against domestic violence and sexual assault worldwide.
During this period, when the left-wing public unofficially anointed Heard as a de facto representative of all three politically leftwing movements, #MeToo was at the height of its political and cultural influence.
However, Amber Heard’s loss to Johnny Depp in the American civil courts has since resulted in horrible publicity news and career outcomes for the actress.
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Amber Heard in 2021. Image courtesy: @amberheard/Instagram.
Before the jury in Virginia decided the legal outcome of Johnny Depp’s civil suit, Ms. Heard lost in the “court of public opinion” as a female celebrity.
There is no equivocation regarding the fact that Ms. Heard lost the US civil court trial and the publicity battle regarding the accusations shared in the media over the past five years. In addition, Mr. Depp’s most compelling legal team member, Camille Vasquez – and legions of women and girls across social media who supported Johnny Depp attacked Amber Heard’s credibility and moral reputation with a vengeance.
The trial has inflicted massive - and what seems to be irreparable damage to Amber Heard’s public reputation and future employment prospects as an actress and product spokeswoman. Ms. Heard has since become persona non grata in the international “A-list” entertainment scene—at least for now. Being associated with Amber Heard also damaged the professional reputations of two organizations for which she was a spokeswoman: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
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Amber Heard as “Mera” in Aquaman (2018). Image courtesy of Warner Brothers Pictures.
Considering the current state of political advocacy for women and girls after former president Donald Trump won election to office in 2016, Ms. Heard’s contributions to the repudiation of the “MeToo” movement are especially disturbing and devastating.
Since 2016, there has been an avalanche of legislation proposed against abortion rights, reproductive care, and equal rights for women and girls in the United States. Conservative politicians and evangelical religious groups are advocating hard against civil liberties for women, sexual autonomy for girls, and economic independence for females.
This rise in misogyny and discrimination against females is part of a cultural backlash against feminist progress for women and girls over the past fifty-plus years.
Amber Heard as “Mera” in Aquaman (2018). Image courtesy of Warner Brothers Pictures.
Considering the American court proceedings and abysmal aftermath of the complete Depp–Heard saga, it is easy to conclude that the whole sordid fifteen-year saga was about money, celebrity career advancement, and social status.
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