In the onslaught of existential crises befalling our world and country of late, I’ve found myself thinking, returning, to the Heard-Depp defamation trial, as much as social media’s explosion around it.
It would appear to me two paramountly concerning things are true.
Firstly, a defamation lawsuit as a result of an op-ed, in which a person is unnamed but faces financial fallout from their implied identity, is allowed to carry on. Unnamed people can be defamed.
On this, Amber Heard is not my preference as the key character witness in this precedent-setting situation, as I would also likely not pass our culture’s test of innocent perfection, a barometer expected of women who dare come forward about anything that happens to them.
The implications of silencing any writer, on the basis of monetary loss or gain to the implied subject, was never the alleged nor basic purpose of a free press. Wasn’t the purpose of the article to point in fact to what Depp represents, rather than his specific identity, and thusly the very basis of his remaining unnamed in the piece?
It’s reasonable to presume, in the trial’s current state, that Heard felt she had cause to harm Depp with the release of the article, and visa-versa in a vendetta lawsuit bearing far-larger, seemingly unintended consequences.
In this, my lingering suspicion is such that the moral outrage, directed at either one of these exclusively, is absurd. Clearly and on multiple occasions, with and without justification, they harmed one another in a drawn-out, toxic situation that we have all decided to call a relationship.
A second truth: I have, no where in the thousands of posts and Reels and TikToks pertaining to the trial, seen anyone acknowledge the mutually-complicit, destructive, codependent nature of Heard and Depp’s romantic relationship from start to finish.
Have we not all, at one point or another, been the real or perceived heroes and villains of our own lives? And in the lives of others?
Since quitting drinking, I began the work of deeply reconsidering the narrative I had spun, and the behavior I had felt justified along the way. The victim-perpetrator dyad is a painful dichotomy to live in, regardless of the legitimacy and severity of one’s experiences.
After some practice, I’m still learning to be gentle with the gravity of the stories I’ve told myself and other people. I could justify my behavior, I have indeed been a victim. I could also seek to understand the whys and hows of the moments I’ve been a villain with accountability, beyond the scope of my own intended power. The choice, as far as I can tell, belongs to all of us.
Precisely none of us are afforded a richer and necessary peace, much less in times such as ours, by way of righteous allegiances or moral certitude.
My hope, for the legal freedom of language, expression, and the press, is that we may cling to whatever value in subjective truth we have left.