How did we let Johnny Depp get away with this?

[ewno]

The day my Hatred for " body language experts" started.

[astroxdez]

society's mentality of having a "perfect victim" definitely plays a part in this

[uhdenuh]

When I was watching the trial and all the discourse around it, it really solidified to me that we as gen z are no less susceptible to the same forces of misogyny and conspiracy theories that have always surrounded female celebrities who come out as victims of abuse. If some self-proclaimed body language expert on TikTok is enough to make you decide that someone is lying about domestic abuse, you need to get a whole lot better at critical thinking.

[ladyaz]

I was in the reddit group where you acknowledged the harm using Amber Heard for that joke could cause, apologised, then mentioned you'd be making a video on the topic in the future. Thank you for following through. It's an admirable thing to do.

My own abuser accused me of being the instigator, spreading stories to our social circles that I was trying to ruin his life. As such, I was ostracised and unable to receive help as I tried to heal. Depp publicising the trial was an abuser punishing their victim for daring to speak out.

Watching Amber Heard go through the same thing I and so many other abuse victims did ×1, 000 was excruciating. I wish more people - and men, especially - spoke out about this form of abuse, especially now that the Internet can be weaponised into complicity.

[VanAlexi]

Bringing up Anita Hill is a deep cut but much needed. During the court case against Clarence Thomas it became a joke about the porn he showed her and pubic hair on a pop can. Nobody talked about the fact that a man soon to become one of the most powerful people in the country sexual harassed a colleague, it became a joke.

We seen this with Johnny Depp and the crap in the bed, Diddy and the baby oil, R. Kelly and the peeing video, Elon Musk offering a flight attendant a horse for sex, and Don’t take a drink from Bill Cosby jokes.

People care more about how many times they can make joke about something more than the catalyst of
said “jokes”

[johnplayer]

"They don't believe in the misinformation because they think it's true, they believe in it because it's THEIR truth." Fire take 10/10

[samuelmodig]

Lindsey Ellise's video on Yoko Ono opened my eyes to how willing the public is to paint women as crazy and pinning blame on them. I have since become more aware and today I feel ashamed that i bought into the narrative of this trial as it was ongoing. I will do better.

[Princess_Weekes]

<3 really great work here. As someone who covered it as the trial was happening, I think that it was just hard to combat the level of misinformation on top of bad faith attacks. I don't know how many times I had to explain: yes, I know men can be abused by women. No, I don't support Heard just because she was a woman. Yes, I have seen the trial. At a certain point you aren't just fighting misinformation, but character attacks because you must be bad and wrong.

[w]

"If I hate you 10 times and you hit me back once that's not mutual abuse, that's an action and a reaction." That's a bar right there

[annathefern]

munecat's "debunking body language experts" video is such an iconic piece, highly recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it yet

[alexrobin]

Keep in mind that this entire trial was viewed as entertainment. A lot of mainstream sources didn’t take it very seriously due to the obscurity of certain details. So a lot people viewed it like a show. With charismatic protagonist Johnny Depp and uncharismatic villain Amber Heard.

[elizabethd]

winona dated johnny when she 17 and he was 26. she stated “johnny was my first everything” in an interview and “my first boyfriend smashed everything. at 18 everything is dramatic.” in another.

[dominique]

Ro Ramdin made a good video when the trial was happening. She put a lot of my discomfort to words. It was so crazy viewing it from a SA survivor’s perspective especially since earlier that year I had finished up my restorative justice process which deeply invalidated my experience. And even more as a black woman seeing the discussion around the trial, I was like if y’all can’t see what i’m seeing and this is a white woman? I soon after got off social media and the hope that i had in people genuinely believing victims was lowkey crushed. Not just the reaction to the fact that Amber experienced abuse but taking up for Johnny just because you find Amber annoying and him endearing and you don’t actually care about male victims? All I can say is thank God for Bell Hooks and the safe spaces I’ve found online and cultivated in my real life

[billbill]

I think more people need to understand the concept of abusers setting their victims up to retaliate as a way to garner pity and sympathy for themselves. Beat someone regularly, verbally insult them, threaten them financially or socially, it's behind closed doors. They hit back one day, or they go into a manic state, that gets out. And look who's suddenly the unreasonable one. And if both get out at the same time, well then there is no victim, they deserve each other and all that nonsense. People are somewhat wise these days to why the abused often don't or can't leave their abuser, but when they fight back suddenly people forget, act as if "leave or fight" are equal options and they just _chose_ to fight because "they're just as bad."

[legendaryfrog]

You don't have to like a woman to defend them when they are abused. You aren't insulting men when you acknowledge men can also be abused.

[deadcard]

Gonna be honest, i was concerned with the way the Amber Heard discourse turned after the court ruling came down. Something about seeing comments like "The b*tch was lying all along" and "That c*nt's career is over" just doesn't make me think the greatest people had gotten invested in the story.

[marymonthei]

I appreciate that you are basically saying “I changed my opinion, get over it.” And I love that because we need more content creators who are not afraid to outright admit this.

[catacombkid]

You and D'Angelo definitely shed a light in things that are in my ideological blindspots
As a male victim of SA by a gf this case was important to me despite my general lack of care for celebrity's lives
It really disappointed me. As a male victim I didn't feel more supported by people believing Johnny's claims and I know other male victims that felt the same (I've spent about 17 or so years working with victims of abuse)
It was really disappointing but honestly this video made me feel optimistic if anything and has shown me other YouTubers that I definitely want to watch. So thank you. Not for me but for all victims of abuse because victimology and abuse isn't always simple and there isn't always a bad guy that's obviously evil and a victim that everyone loves

[medusonegirl]

Omg, thanks for the shoutout! I'm so glad you were willing to make this video and apologize for your (or your editor's) previous joke. In making my videos on DvH, I had to watch clips of a lot of content creators who I otherwise respected making some very shameful commentary on the case. Not to excuse the joke you made, but your name was still toward the bottom of the list of creators that I think actually owe Amber Heard an apology and I hope your willingness to take accountability for a comparatively tiny contribution to the Amber Heard hate-train encourages others to look back at some far more harmful commentary from 2022.

I do agree that there was a perception of Amber's plight being an example of "white feminism." I received plenty of comments from Johnny Depp supporters dismissing my commentary as "a white woman coming to the defense of another white woman" (conveniently leaving out the fact that I was defending her against a white man).

Despite it being at the core of Amber's counterclaims (and everyone insists they "watched the trial" 🙄), people don't realize the extent to which the online rhetoric surrounding the case was specifically orchestrated by Johnny's team. His lead attorney from the UK case literally admitted to leaking information about Amber to what he called "Internet Journalists" (aka, alt-right YouTubers and conspiracy theorist bloggers) prior to the trials; and there's been quite a lot uncovered in the last year about bot campaigns Johnny's team very clearly utilized for years leading up to 2022.

Who's to say what talking points were organic in all the conversations surrounding the case and what was planted by bad-actors, but certainly Johnny's team benefitted from people wildly overestimating the amount of power and privilege Amber Heard had. Emphasizing Amber's whiteness was a part of that to an extent, but at least for that, Amber Heard is, in fact, white and does therefore benefit from white privilege. What was far more absurd was the idea held by many leftists that this case didn't represent legitimate problems in our society and shouldn't be paid attention to because both people involved in it were just some rich celebrities, despite Amber Heard never being all that rich nor that famous.

In the year of their divorce, she had a net income of just over $50, 000, while Johnny had made several million dollars that same year; and as you admitted at the beginning of this video, before you started doing more research, you wouldn't have been able to pick Amber out from a line-up of other random blonde actresses. Outside of her relationship with Johnny, she was barely a celebrity (perhaps in part because of her relationship with Johnny as he was incredibly restrictive of what professional opportunities she could even pursue while they were together and the negative attention she received after their divorce has definitely not helped her). But propping Amber up as an ultra-privileged famous rich white woman was a great tool to downplay the severe power imbalance that laid the foundation for the abuse in her marriage, as well as mitigate the amount of empathy certain sections of the Internet would be willing to show her in her legal battles against her far more powerful ex.

That being said, on the claim that "there was a genuine lack of black attention paid toward [Amber's] case, " I have to say, as someone who's been pretty involved with pro-Amber Heard circles for over a year, I think the statement should maybe be amended to say there was a genuine lack of black *male* attention. Many of the earliest public defenders of Amber Heard have been black women–which makes sense as black women are statistically more likely to be the victims of domestic violence–but not only have many of their contributions been overlooked within the larger discourse because their voices are consistently undervalued outside of this one conversation, many of them have also been far more severely targeted by pro-Johnny Depp harassment campaigns which have unfortunately muffled if not full-out silenced many advocates.

(also the channel name is pronounced like med-oos-oh-nee; think Medusa + Persephone)

[lol-vbwg]

I felt like a crazy person when I saw the way people were treating her in 2022. Thank you for covering this.