Media Coverage of the Depp vs Heard Trial: The Male Hegemony’s Wet Dream

Over the last few weeks social media channels have been saturated with clips of Johnny Depp’s charming responses to Heard’s lawyer’s awkward interrogations. His response to his own question as ‘hearsay’ is often clipped together with Heard’s poker face, whilst the gallery cackles in support of Depp’s assumed victory. 

For the last few weeks social media channels have been saturated with clips of Johnny Depp’s charming responses to Heard’s lawyer’s awkward interrogations. His response to his own question as ‘hearsay’ is often clipped together with Heard’s poker face, whilst the gallery cackles in support of Depp’s assumed victory. 

This public streaming of a court trial is unusual from a British perspective, most of us never having experienced court dynamics first-hand beyond casual enjoyment of Suits. The online documentation of the event, similar to the atmosphere many Brits experienced during Meghan Markle’s 2021 Oprah interview, is one of distasteful sensationalism. Clearly, Amber Heard is in a far different position as an alleged abuser, but the media’s joy in ripping apart this woman is hauntingly familiar. 

We are given a window into the most private moments of a relationship, the court setting appearing fictitious as though this is a gripping new court drama. We are unable to empathise beyond this assumption, unable to separate the cinematic versions of Depp and Heard from what we are watching. The news cycle has made a shocking shift from late February and March’s constant coverage of the victims of the Ukraine War to Heard’s pained but tearless face. For many, this is a welcome shift into a lighter form of hardship, but what does this reveal about societal addiction to these cycles of advertised suffering?

      The constant background to our lives is getting louder, social media algorithms dredges up the rawest forms of suffering for the consumer’s titillation. We are unable to engage empathetically in this gross news cycle, as we become desensitised to the weekly crisis. The voice recordings of these untouchable celebrities’ most painful arguments, moments of vulnerability and intimacy is social media’s heroin. 

The iconography of the celebrity is most engaging when we can witness the cracks in the facade. Amber Heard’s assertion, “I hit you, I did not punch you,” when she is unaware that she is being recorded, stirs up an ugly pleasure in the consumer. This may be traced back to a backlash against the 2017 Me Too movement, as the patriarchal narrative of “She’s doing it for attention” is partially confirmed, to the satisfaction of the white male hegemony. The problem here is that Heard does not represent all women, but the social media stage continues to expect this from women in the public eye. The consumer has become a bloodthirsty mob, combing the internet for these lowest moments. Perhaps we feel validated in our distance from Heard, the purpose of this suffering-obsession to validate our own morality.

     In Ancient Rome, humans would flock to the amphitheatre to watch bloody battles for weekend entertainment. A decade ago, we’d watch old people cry on X-Factor as Simon Cowell stonily told them “It’s a no from me.” Our perverse pleasure in public humiliation is no new phenomena. Now, suffering as entertainment is constant. It’s in our ear on the bus, on our screens, governing our world-perspectives. As social media is unregulated, able to spread biased or entirely fake news, political initiatives, and uphold power structures, there is no one who has our best interests in mind. Artificial intelligence achieves the consumer’s maximum attention at any cost. Given Russia’s manipulation of Facebook ads affecting the 2016 US election, one is led to question how large a role social media plays in maintaining power structures of race, gender and class. 

It is easy to view history as one balding white bogeyman after another, with Mark Zuckerburg and Elon Musk donning the 21st Century cap for our new covert oppressors. The psychological effects of Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok are likely damaging to the consumer’s concentration span, memory, and mental health. We know that our phones are designed to keep us hooked, the perfect ‘filler’ for moments of stillness, but the terrifying thing is that we don’t mind. Our society has been structured so that at this point, a phone-less life would be too much of an inconvenience. What would we do? Not use Google Maps? 

  The Heard-Depp Trial on a consumer level allows us to feel engaged in public affairs, whilst upholding familiar patriarchal power dynamics, encouraging a higher level of hate due to their celebrity status. It appears the internet is thrilled to finally cancel a woman for embellishing her victimhood. Social media screams “I told you so!” as countless other non-famous female victims of abuse are so often met with disbelief. 

What felt like a snowballing movement of questioning power hierarchies after Me Too, has fizzled. Public opinion, previously embodied by our politicians and newspapers, has now fallen to tech moguls, AI and Gen Z Tik Toks making fun of Heard’s cry-face. For now, they remain in charge, harvesting our data, shoving suffering into our eye lines and gleefully reminding women not to get cocky, or you could end up like Amber.

Grace Payne Kumar