If popular media had its way, nobody would ever get married. ‘Marriage as catastrophe’ gets all the play while the happy couples get ignored. Understandably so, I guess.
It wasn’t always like this. If you’re a GenXer like me, there was a period of positive marriage role-modeling, right before it went off the rails. The first happy couple I saw on TV was Darren and Samantha Stevens. Aside from Darren’s ‘no hocus-pocus’ rule, they seemed to get along pretty well.
After that, it was mostly divorces, bachelors, bachelorettes and single moms like Anne Romano in One Day at a Time and Shirley Partridge, whose husband almost never came up in conversation. Somewhere along the way, there was this…
People watched Edward Albee’s 1962 masterpiece Who’s Afraid of a Virginia Woolf with morbid fascination. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were mesmerizing as the bickering, mutually loathing couple George and Martha. Probably more so since their off-screen marriage was every bit as tempestuous as the couple they were playing.
Since then, there’s been no shortage of schlocky rom-coms and happy-ever-afters. But it’s the disasters that stand out: Kramer Vs. Kramer, War of the Roses and eventually American Beauty. In real life, there was the fairy-tale wedding of Diana and Charles, which ended in misery and violent death. Looking back, you begin to realize why the Freudian slip of saying ‘funeral’ when you mean ‘wedding’ is so common.
Now imagine the fictional George and Martha. Add in the real-life Richard and Liz and a soupçon of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. Sprinkle in every miserable, explosive FUBAR couple you know et voila… you have the recipe for these two lovebirds:
It’s impossible to escape the gruesome saga of Depp v Heard. In case you have—and despite your fervent disinterest—I’ll fill you in: Johnny Depp is suing Amber Heard for $50 million over a Washington Post op-ed she wrote and in which she not so subtly suggests he’s a domestic abuser. Claiming a smear campaign against her, she’s counter-suing for $100 million.
As a kid, the cultural symbolism of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf flew over my head. But I see it now. Albee had as much to say about the State of the Union as he did the state of marriage. This was Cold War America at its peak and apparently mutually assured destruction was as much a thing between couples as it was between nations. The rot at the heart of George and Martha’s marriage was a metaphor for the rotting American dream.
All I can say is… ah, the good old days. Cut to 2022: markets crashing, cryptocurrencies plunging and now looming stagflation. Still believe in this institution of marriage? Too bad! You can’t afford it! In this classy pairing, we have the ugly distraction truly worthy of our ugly times.
Had they never met, like the majority of actors his age, Depp might have faded into the background. Most of us would never have heard of Amber Heard. Now she’s the most hated woman on the internet. Twitter, normally so circumspect in its character judgements—LOL JK!—has nicknamed her Amber Turd. Reasons being 1) she may have shat in Johnny Depp’s bed and 2) judging by her performances on the stand, she’s a shit actress. Tell me, is this turmoil or boredom?
A few days into the trial, a court psychiatrist testified Amber Heard suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. Upon hearing the diagnosis, she all but set out to prove it correct. Here is a mere warm-up—an amuse-bouche—to her batshit courtroom antics:
Wow. What is that? A troll? A gaslight? Who is that calculated? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Amber Heard is that calculated…
Since the beginning of the trial, Amber Heard’s testimony has floundered, waffled—basically taken the scenic route. Along the way, there’s been buckets of alligator tears and a blizzard of lies. Among her most embarrassing was the whopper about donating her $7 million divorce settlement to the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Having failed to follow through, she faked not knowing the difference between ‘pledge’ and ‘donate.’
Amber Heard: I swear your honor, I was going to send them the money but Johnny sued me!
Sane people of the world:
She seems to have squandered all the good will she built up with that deceptive Washington Post op-ed. Aside from Ellen Barkin, her remaining supporters consist of paid publicists, her hilariously named lawyer Benjamin Rottenborn and a handful of legacy media nitwits clinging to the ‘believe all women’ mantra, including the writer of this Vogue editorial…
Note the commanding tone of this passive-aggressive piece of peer pressure: Wake up misogynists! It’s time! Not ‘I believe’ or ‘you should believe’ or ‘why does nobody believe’ but—***insert booming James Earl Jones voice***—it is time.
Nice try, Raven Smith, but everyone knows it’s not only men who abuse their spouses. Which isn’t to say Johnny Depp was a model husband—not the version of him zonked out and covered in ice cream. Ex party animal Keith Richards was apparently his muse in more ways than one. He has made some spectacularly poor choices. According to Vanity Fair, he blew through an astonishing $650 million without really being able to account for it. He spent $3 million alone blasting Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon.
His worst choice to date appears to be marrying a woman determined to destroy him. If he has any hope of mending his broken career, he’ll have to start with taking responsibility for this original sin. That may sound like hindsight but he should have known better. Why didn’t he?
Trivia time!
Question: why do reasonably intelligent men keep falling for the ‘pretty nutjob’ archetype despite early warnings signs of impulsivity, brattiness, unpredictability, insane jealousy and possible daddy issues?
***buzzer sound*** Times up!
Answer: she’s a volcano in the sack!
It’s encouraging that at least one half of this toxic, broken-down relationship appears semi rational. Johnny Depp is trying to salvage his shattered career. She appears to be firing a torpedo at hers. Which is why I predict he’ll win this court case.
Sadly, at the end of the day, when this lurid controversy fades from the headlines, there will be no winners and everyone will be worse off: Johnny Depp, whose image is forever tarnished. Amber Heard, who will probably never work again. Us, for having witnessed this squalid interlude. And the institution of marriage, which will have endured yet another blow to its reputation.
It's a year and some later now, but this was a great flashback; I was glued to the whole damn thing while it was happening; rooting for Johnny of course. But I think the sensationalism could be attributed to our need to balance the excesses of virtual-signalling by the "Me Too" movement and its strident man-hating feminism. It just felt damn good for society to hear the truth about one narcissistic, gas-lighting, sociopath of a woman. And I think it maybe served to highlight for everyone what a good marriage is NOT. Many constructive lessons in that saga, methinks.
She’s only pretty on the outside