Sympathy for the Devil
On Johnny Depp, and our seemingly endless ability to humanize and forgive abusive men.
His speech is slurred. He’s puffy. He struggles to answer basic questions. Ask him what movies he’s been in, or who he played in those movies; sometimes he can’t recall. He’s trying some kind of accent these days — transatlantic, a Katherine Hepburn thing; on lines like “sir, this is a pathetic attempt,” he’s doing Godfather-era Marlon Brando — and his skin is orange under the fluorescent lights of the courtroom. He wears dark sunglasses. In the middle of the day. Indoors.
I’ve been having nightmares about the Johnny Depp trial. Footage keeps popping up on my social media feeds. It’s recommended to me on YouTube under titles like “Johnny Depp Being Hilarious in Court! (Part 3)” or “Amber Heard’s Lawyers ANNOYING Johnny Depp.” In those clips, the details of a domestic violence case are embellished with “quirky” Muzak, jumpy edits, and insistently unfunny humor (the subtitles note every time a chair — hilariously? — squeaks) that push the whole thing well past “surreal” and into pure uncanny horror, like a laugh track pasted over footage of souls being tortured in Hell.
These clips are so creepy that it’s difficult to believe they’re real: Is anybody actually deluded enough to find this funny? Are the videos being…
