Hollywood certainly loves its remakes. Earlier this year, all eyes were on the messy and misogynistic Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial; Depp won and Heard was publicly torn apart. Now the long-running legal battle between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt has escalated and it looks, depressingly, as if Jolie is going to get the Heard treatment.
Here’s where things stand: Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt six years ago but the divorce hasn’t yet been finalised because the actors are still arguing over custody of their children and assets (they have a lot of both). Pitt has accused Jolie of selling a stake in their winery, Château Miraval, in an underhand manner to a Russian oligarch. Somehow the invasion of Ukraine got dragged into all this, with Pitt arguing that the Russian ties hurt the winery’s brand.
Meanwhile, Jolie has filed a cross-complaint that accuses Pitt of domestic abuse on a 2016 flight. Court documents filed last week allege that “Pitt choked one of the children and struck another in the face” and “grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her”. He also reportedly “poured beer on Jolie” and “poured beer and red wine on the children”. The FBI looked into the allegations but didn’t bring criminal charges. Sources close to Pitt deny Jolie’s versions of events.
I have no idea what is true, obviously. What I do know is that the truth doesn’t seem to matter to an awful lot of people. Since Jolie accused Pitt of abuse last week, she has been called a liar by social media vigilantes, become the subject of misogynistic YouTube videos and dubbed “another Amber Heard”. The US gossip website TMZ has reported claims that “Angelina Jolie is on a smear campaign against Brad Pitt” and has “poisoned their kids to turn on him”. Again, I don’t know what is true in all this. But one thing is clear: the Depp v Heard trial didn’t end when the jury verdict came in. Any woman, no matter how famous, who speaks out about a powerful man is going to be treated like Amber Heard 2.0. Depp wrote a playbook men accused of misconduct seem very eager to copy.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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