‘I’m obsessed.’
‘I can’t stop reading every details’
‘It’s like what celebrity news was like 10 years ago. I feel a bit grubby but I need to know more’
Just a few choices quotes from WhatsApp messages, Zoom chats with colleagues and conversations I’ve had with friends in the last week or so. Obviously they were all talking about the [Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial](http://The Toxic Treatment Of Amber Heard Is Insulting To Those Reporting Domestic Abuse), in which neither Johnny Depp nor Amber Heard is on trial. Instead, Dan Wootton, Executive Editor of The Sun, and its parent company News Group Newspapers are being sued for libel by Depp after calling him a ‘wife beater’ in print. Depp denies this, so the trial is about whether The Sun can prove their allegation was true.'
Even without commenting on the potential guilt or innocence of either party in a live case, no-one would disagree that it’s been a veritable muck fest so far, raking over and highlighting things no-one would want to have in the public domain (last week, amongst other things, we heard that Johnny Depp had wanted a DNA test done on some feaces left in his bed to prove it belonged to Heard and pictures were released of Johnny Depp, in an apparent drug and alcohol-induced stupor, covered in ice cream. This week it was the revelation that Depp has unflattering nicknames for Heard's male co-stars, highlights including Leo 'Pumpkin Head' DiCaprio and Channing 'Potato Head' Tatum. There have also been celebrity cameos in the form of character witness statements from Depp’s exes Vanessa Paradis and Winona Ryder.
READ MORE: Johnny Depp's Exes From Lori Anne Allison To Kate Moss
Does anyone else find themselves pouring over the details like they’re in a slightly grubby time warp? It’s the really specific, horrid details, the random celebrity cameos (texts from Paul Bettany! Benders with Marilyn Manson!) That make it pure News Of The World fodder, from back in the days when celebs were celebs, happy to serve us up a big slice of sleaze on a Sunday morning along with our bacon and eggs (this was back before bunch was invented, kids).
The problem is, we all agree, quite rightly, that those days are over. Post phone hacking, post Me Too, in the midst of a world-altering global pandemic, ogling the details celebrities’ private lives, no matter how unedifying, feels wrong - it is wrong. It feels both immoral and irrelevant - and frankly, we all thought we were better than that. We’ve stopped looking at the Sidebar of Shame and started listening to podcasts about global warming - we’ve changed!
Except we’re not and we haven’t. Every day this week the case has dominated the headlines. And we might like to blame the media for adding fuel to the fire, but Amber Heard, Johnny Depp and this morning Vanessa Paradis were trending as the most-searched names on google this week. We want to read about it, and then we want to read more.
Our moral ambiguity (and if you don’t think this applies to you, then just assume I mean ‘me,’ because I do) is further charged by the fact that this is a question of domestic abuse. We're transfixed by the absurdity of so much of it, but whatever went on in that relationship, the levels of misery and dysfunction that are being shared with us are horrifying. In today's 39-page witness statement, Heard claims that Depp 'threatened to kill' her many times and alleges that he punched, head-butted, kicked and strangled her, claiming that he told her before their 2016 that 'death was the only way out of the relationship.'
By pouring over every detail of a bad relationship breaking down in the worst way, we are active participants as its relived in minute detail and in public. Re-playing it in this way is actually pretty obscene but we can’t (or won’t) look away.
Maybe we’ve been starved of celebrity gossip in lockdown, and can’t help but gobble up this veritable feast of intrigue and drama, when in a pre-pandemic week a picture of Jennifer Aniston looking great in a black dress and a bit of light speculation about where Kate Middleton’s earrings came from would have seen us through. Or maybe it’s the very grey, ambiguous nature of the case that makes it so compelling - there are few heroes and many villains and in lieu of any actual soap operas on, maybe it’s understandable that we can’t stop watching the IRL one playing out in London right now. But actually, no-one looks like they’re coming out of this case covered in glory - the watching public included.