Midway through the three-part Netflix documentary series “Deep v. Heard,” we see a clip of a podcast in which an individual identified as a “content creator” says Johnny Depp’s defamation suit against his ex-wife Amber Heard has “transformed into a cultural moment. I wasn’t old enough to experience the impact of the O.J. Simpson trial, but if I had to guess, the hold, the chokehold that this lawsuit has on the world … it’s comparable.”
No. It really isn’t.
The Simpson trial was indeed a media circus and at times a grotesque spectacle, a theater of pain (and I certainly wasn’t above it, writing dozens upon dozens of pieces about every facet of the case), but it also spoke great volumes about the state of race and class relations in the America of the early 1990s, and the events of that case reverberated culturally for years to follow.
The six-week case of John C. Depp II v. Amber Laura Heard attracted worldwide attention and spawned countless memes, podcasts and YouTube shows, but it’s difficult to believe anyone will be talking about this story three years from now, let alone 30. (One shudders at the thought.) Watching this slapdash and superficial docuseries, which offers very little in the way of analysis while providing a powerful platform for a bevy of mostly pro-Depp social media commenters and influencers who gleefully spew vitriol at Heard and in some cases cruelly mock her testimony, one mostly feels sadness at the displays of exploitation.
In 2018, the actress Amber Heard wrote a piece in the Washington Post in which she said, “I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” Though Depp was not mentioned by name, the implication was clear, and he filed a $50 million defamation suit against Heard. The trial was held in 2022 in Fairfax, Virginia, because the Post had servers and a printing press there, and the judge ruled that TV cameras could be present in the courtroom, leading to some 200 hours of livestream coverage. Influencers around the world pounced on the opportunity to provide instant analysis, with the majority of commenters on the Internet squarely in Depp’s corner. “You can really feel how much of a psychopath this woman is!” chortles one commenter.
This is one of the major drawbacks to the series: the failure to hold any of these commenters accountable, to even explain who they are beyond a simple graphic, to interview them after the fact and ask them how they feel about their performances, which were designed to gain as many “Likes” and Subscribers as possible. We keep seeing this one guy in a Deadpool mask, spooling his instant and uninformed opinions. Who is he? What’s his background story? Why does he wear the mask? Why should his opinions carry any weight whatsoever?
The filmmakers have edited the courtroom footage for “clarity, allowing their accounts to be shown side by side for the first time,” an admittedly effective technique that allows us to see the vast differences in Heard’s and Depp’s recollections of a relationship that was stunningly toxic, no matter which side we believe.
Depp wears suits and tinted glasses, and speaks in that affected, near-British accent that belies his upbringing in Kentucky and Florida; he once told Heard, “You will never see these eyes again,” and he holds true to that childish pledge throughout the trial, refusing to even look in her direction.
Heard, meanwhile, seems increasingly distraught, and some of her more emotional reactions are re-created by women on TikTok who found Heard’s allegations of horrific abuse to be comedic fodder.
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, this is it — but that never happens. Granted, the third and final episode explores the “Viral Verdict” and includes clips of individuals lamenting how Heard was viciously attacked online during the trial and after she gave post-trial interviews, but by then we’ve been inundated with clips of misogynist influencers, including one guy who is so excited about meeting his hero backstage after a concert that we expect him to faint.
Depp was awarded more than $10 million in damages by the jury, while Heard was awarded $2 million for a counterclaim she won. The public and media consensus was that this was a major victory for Johnny Depp, and a humiliating, devastating setback for Amber Heard. As we hear audio of their fights, see smartphone video of screaming matches, hear about Depp drinking a “mega-pint” of red wine (which of course launched dozens of memes), hear Heard’s accusations and Depp’s counters, it’s impossible to know who is telling the truth in many instances — but it’s beyond any doubt that this union, which Depp likened to Bogie and Bacall in its early days, went horribly, terribly sour and truly ugly very quickly.
The influencers who took such joy in exploiting the trial, who cackled with glee at the verdict, and in some cases made vicious fun of Heard in particular, must be extremely proud of themselves. Way to capture the zeitgeist.
