The Public Loathing of Amber Heard
Over the past month the American masses have been drawn like flies to the contentious defamation trial between Hollywood actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Beamed in to living rooms every weekday and cut-and-pasted into innumerable (and often snarkily edited) video clips that achieved instant virality, the trial became a curiously massive sensation. Netflix binges were sidelined across the country in favor of tuning in to the grueling proceedings unfolding inside an otherwise sleepy, little-known courtroom in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Within this televised portal paperwork was shuffled, legal jargon sloshed about, and the clinical swearing-in of witnesses accumulated. The picture of the dreary, wood-paneled courtroom endured on the screen, hour after hour. Each member of the legal saga occupied their respective posts in crisp, starchy neutrals, morning after morning.
But make no mistake: The case has turned out to be far from boring. Some stories told were nauseating, others theatrical. As fresh faces appeared in court, another layer of intrigue was added to the roiling, ever-expanding drama. And the lies. . . tumbling into the stale air of the courtroom, lies that oozed a murky heaviness, that left a metallic, bitter taste in the mouths of onlookers.
It is safe to say that public support clotted on the side of Johnny Depp, and…
