A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Amber Heard & The Myth of the Perfect Victim

00:00:00.000 We pick a woman to hate, we find a reason why it's morally justified to hurl any amount of abuse at her, and then we do it. 0.92

00:00:07.740 And a bunch of years later, we're like, hmm, guess we were wrong. 0.95

00:00:11.620 And then like two weeks later, we do it again.

00:00:19.840 Hello, hello, I'm Matt Bernstein, and welcome to A Bit Fruity, the weekly podcast where we're joined by celebrities, journalists, thought leaders, and experts.

00:00:28.740 and we really dig into the cultural and political moments that are shaping our lives.

00:00:33.460 Really quick before we start, if you like the podcast and want to be notified when we

00:00:38.020 release new episodes every week, you can follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever

00:00:43.000 you get your podcasts.

00:00:44.300 And we're also on Instagram at abitfruitypod and on YouTube, etc.

00:00:50.080 All of those links will be in the episode description.

00:00:53.140 Today, we are kind of jumping straight into the deep end and talking about something that

00:00:58.740 that really gripped the nation and the world about a year ago, which was the Amber Heard and

00:01:05.120 Johnny Depp case. And I don't just want to sit here and relive the case. So that's not what

00:01:11.560 we're going to do. But we are going to look at it from the standpoint of how the public's reaction

00:01:17.060 to it and how we as a collective kind of failed not only Amber Heard, but women, how we failed

00:01:24.280 victims of abuse, how we misunderstood what it means to be a victim of abuse, and how we failed

00:01:29.440 ourselves as a kind of post-MeToo society that thinks of itself as one that supports and believes

00:01:35.640 victims when clearly it doesn't. Today we're joined by my friend and someone whose work I

00:01:43.120 admire so deeply. Kat Tenbarge is a tech and culture journalist at NBC News. She's covered

00:01:49.800 influencer culture as well as domestic abuse and celebrity abuse trials and the way that we talk

00:01:56.140 about them. She was one of the very early and more prominent voices to support Amber Heard and kind of

00:02:02.820 see the trial for what it was from the beginning. And she got no shortage of backlash for that. So

00:02:08.080 I'm so excited to be sitting down with you. I couldn't think of a better person to cover this

00:02:12.000 with. Thank you for being here, Kat. Thank you so much for having me. And I just want to say

00:02:16.940 from the beginning of this episode, you can probably tell that we are going to take the

00:02:22.580 position of supporting Amber Heard because we do. And we're going to get into the nuances of what

00:02:28.340 that means and supporting victims of abuse, even when you don't think that they are perfect people

00:02:36.020 supporting victims of abuse, even if you might not like them supporting victims of abuse who

00:02:41.640 are difficult, because that's what supporting victims of abuse means. And we're going to

00:02:45.620 get into all of that. But I just want to say, heads up, that's where this is going. Obviously,

00:02:50.340 also, we're going to be talking about domestic abuse. So if that is something that makes you

00:02:55.440 uncomfortable or is triggering, just proceed with that warning. Again, I don't want to get

00:03:00.580 bogged down in an hour of talking about, you know, in reliving this trial. But I do think it's

00:03:05.940 important for us to have a conversation about Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, supporting victims of

00:03:10.440 abuse, the online backlash, the people who profit off of this. I think it is important to lay a

00:03:15.260 little bit of groundwork so could you kat tell us about how this trial came to be yes so you know

00:03:23.560 from my perspective i did not know very much about johnny depp and amber heard's relationship

00:03:29.540 until the defamation trial in the united states kicked off and because that wasn't the first

00:03:36.120 trial right yes it's like with regard to their abuse in the history of their relationship and

00:03:42.580 also everything that happened after their relationship, the U.S. defamation trial came

00:03:47.920 along very late in the process. There was so much that happened before then. And so from the get-go,

00:03:53.980 people tend to hyper-fixate on the verdict of this trial and the public opinion during this trial.

00:04:00.240 But in order to accurately assess what happened here, you have to go back to the beginning.

00:04:05.720 And I think that by looking at just the messiness that was presented last May, it was easy for people to get confused because they were seeing the most volatile sides of both of these figures at the worst points of their lives.

00:04:21.680 When it wasn't always like that.

00:04:22.720 Exactly. There was obviously a time before.

00:04:26.160 And when you examine that time before, it becomes really, really clear what actually happened.

00:04:30.680 And, you know, for me as a journalist, I've had people say, like, why do you take a position here? Like, why are you choosing to support Amber or defend her? Shouldn't you be unbiased?

00:04:43.460 And so I think my position on it is as a journalist, you are supposed to be the one looking at all the evidence, looking at the full timeline and coming to a conclusion. And another thing that's important for journalists to do is to hold systems of power accountable. And so people will be like, oh, how can you disagree with the verdict? And it's like, well, first of all, which one? Because there was one before.

00:05:09.740 Because there was one before that did not take Johnny Depp's side.

00:05:13.520 Exactly. And so it's like even just looking at the legal thing.

00:05:16.860 And also it's not like you have to uncritically accept the verdict of that comes from a criminal justice system that is historically broken and does not often side or favor victims of abuse.

00:05:27.860 But sorry, let me continue.

00:05:28.960 Exactly. I mean, for me, one of the very first connections I made as the trial was actually happening was going back to O.J. Simpson.

00:05:38.140 We saw a lot of the same attitudes and media consumption habits on display.

00:05:43.420 The difference is we're in the TikTok era.

00:05:47.000 And so when O.J. Simpson's trial was being televised, people had a way into the courtroom for the first time in a really big way where it felt like the entire country was watching these events unfold.

00:05:58.740 But the difference in the Depp Heard trial is people were actually creating content alongside it, that people were consuming the trial mainly through viral content.

00:06:09.840 Right. Like it felt like very quickly. I mean, if you were on any part of the Internet during spring of 2022, you came across Johnny Depp, Amber Heard content.

00:06:21.720 And like oftentimes it was parody. Like I remember SNL did a skit where they were like, I mean, SNL is in nature, it's comedy. And they were making a comedy routine out of this trial about domestic abuse that was ongoing. And all of this, I mean, it became like these were not two human beings on the stand discussing domestic abuse. It was like a TV show that came to life that we could all participate in in our own ways.

00:06:50.640 And yeah, it was totally inescapable.

00:06:52.740 Yeah. And Amber Heard was presented to people as a caricature of just like the worst woman who you can imagine. 1.00

00:07:00.420 Because as she became a global obsession, it was 99% hatred. 0.74

00:07:06.040 And so when you're aiming all of that hatred at somebody, they cease to become a human in the public eye.

00:07:11.660 Like the dehumanization of Amber Heard was completely, you know, it transformed her public perception and her public image.

00:07:19.760 And so when we talk about, you know, who lost in terms of everything, it was Amber who her public image is going to be forever tied to this.

00:07:30.820 And also she met Johnny Depp when she was like 22 years old.

00:07:35.840 So her entire life from that point has been completely consumed by this man.

00:07:41.840 When did they meet? How did their relationship form? How old were they at the time? Because I believe he was twice her age.

00:07:47.160 Yes. Yeah. So in 2009, Johnny Depp is already one of the most famous people on the planet.

00:07:56.380 Kind of a pillar of American entertainment.

00:07:59.020 Exactly. One of the most iconic actors ever, just flat out. And he was 46. And he was starting to

00:08:07.940 work on a passion project of his, which was The Rum Diary. It's a 2009 movie based on a book by

00:08:16.220 hunter s thompson who is a personal hero and a personal friend of johnny depp's because he's

00:08:21.880 old like yes like johnny depp is not a young person like this is not a flourishing romance

00:08:26.640 where they were both in their 20s exactly he's 46 years old he has all this like he could have

00:08:31.920 been her dad 100 and he also had a very well publicized history of both aggression and having

00:08:39.020 a temper and sometimes a violent temper even if it was like destroying hotel rooms that's still

00:08:44.640 an aggressive streak. And he had talked about it at length. He was very open about the fact

00:08:49.460 that he was willing to engage in physical violence with people. He also had a very

00:08:54.040 well-publicized history of substance abuse and drug and alcohol addiction. And so you have a

00:08:59.320 very volatile and very powerful man who is at that point, really, I think, at the peak of his

00:09:04.540 career. You know, he's done Jack Sparrow. And so that's Johnny Depp at the outset of this

00:09:10.140 relationship. And then you have Amber Heard. And Amber at that point was relatively unknown. She

00:09:16.640 had very, very small roles in movies that weren't that huge. And when they were casting for this

00:09:23.200 movie, initially, I think Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet or Keira Knightley, there were other

00:09:30.260 women interested who were big actresses because this was a big role. But they cast Amber. They 1.00

00:09:36.220 cast her when she was 22 turning 23 which is the age of a college graduate the age of a college

00:09:41.340 you know and i don't mean to infantilize her like she was an adult yeah but she was half his age

00:09:46.440 and the age of a college graduate exactly and part of the reason why they ultimately gave the 0.85

00:09:52.040 role to amber is because she was willing to do the level of nudity that the role required that

00:09:57.760 some older actresses were a little scared off by so i think that's really interesting because this

00:10:02.240 is like a theme throughout their relationship is that like depp is the only one who's allowed to

00:10:07.080 sexualize her later in the relationship he's telling her you can't do roles where you take

00:10:12.520 your clothes off like i don't want other people to see you that way this was a golden opportunity

00:10:16.920 for her because i've had some people say things like oh well she dated him because he was going

00:10:23.100 to be great for her career and it's like she took this movie because it was a golden opportunity

00:10:29.160 a once in a lifetime chance, she would be crazy not to take it. So, you know, her getting into

00:10:35.320 that situation, it's not even viewed as a bad thing at this point. It's like, this is a high

00:10:40.020 note for her. And at the time, both she and Depp were in relationships. When they filmed the movie

00:10:46.060 in 2009 and all the way through the beginning of their own relationship, Amber was in a relationship

00:10:51.860 with her former wife and Johnny Depp was also in a relationship with his then wife and the mother

00:10:57.120 of his children and so amber's bisexual yes amber's like i did not know yeah it's she's bisexual

00:11:03.680 bisexual people are more likely to be victimized in relationships and also like her top the topic

00:11:10.780 of her sexuality is a recurring theme throughout the allegations of abuse so it's really interesting

00:11:16.780 that he set his sights on her as she was having her first serious relationship with a woman

00:11:22.460 right and I mean in some of like the texts and audios and whatever he kind of like weaponizes her 0.98

00:11:27.140 bisexuality against her and like kind of the the image of her being a slut yeah he calls her a 0.94

00:11:34.680 lesbian camp counselor yeah yeah he he definitely a lesbian camp counselor which like why is this an 0.98

00:11:40.660 insult I know right that's like if someone ever called me a lesbian like adjacent to a lesbian 0.98

00:11:45.100 camp counselor I'd be like fuck yeah yeah I'd be like I should have thought of that for myself 0.98

00:11:49.820 so so they're both married and how do they end up together so at the time of filming the movie 0.96

00:11:58.140 they're filming you know as romantic dynamics opposite one of each other in the film and then

00:12:04.520 they go back to their lives after filming completes and then they come back together

00:12:09.380 to promote the film and that's where both of them have said their relationship really flourished

00:12:15.300 was when they like rejoined to promote the film and both of them ended up getting out of their

00:12:20.740 relationships and they got together. And so this was 2012. Okay. At the beginning of their

00:12:26.360 relationship. And so in the beginning, everything was amazing. Because that's how relationships

00:12:33.280 always start. Exactly. There's a honeymoon phase. Right. And like, I think one thing that really

00:12:38.700 strikes me about the relationship between Johnny and Amber is from what you see online,

00:12:44.880 And you would get this impression that she's like very cynical and has always hated him.

00:12:48.740 Right.

00:12:48.980 But when you actually look at the relationship and how she described it and how her friends described her and how they talked about each other, she was very, very in love with him.

00:12:57.420 She was arguably in love with him to a fault because when these signs started to emerge, her first instinct was to defend him and to protect him and to try to get him help.

00:13:09.000 Right, which I imagine will later be used against her as like, well, if this was so bad, then why didn't she X, Y, or Z?

00:13:16.860 Exactly.

00:13:17.600 Because there's no right way to be a victim in the public's eye.

00:13:20.140 Right. And what really is so frustrating about it is from doing reporting about victims and about sexual assault and intimate partner violence,

00:13:32.980 over time the pattern that is established by all of these various perpetrators it's like you're

00:13:39.040 seeing the same things over and over again like the concepts and the dynamics in the cycle of

00:13:45.200 abuse are very well recognized and they're very easy to spot if you know what to look for and so

00:13:51.740 i think the way that we publicly consumed this trial you didn't have actual education about

00:13:58.140 domestic violence being shared. And you didn't actually have people who were championing

00:14:03.360 Depp talking about the misconceptions involved in domestic violence. Because if they had,

00:14:11.000 it would have become clear that he wasn't a victim.

00:14:13.560 Right. At what point does the relationship become abusive? And then how long is it until

00:14:19.940 they separate? And then because I know in 2018 is when we got this op-ed from Amber that then

00:14:25.100 leads to everything else. Yes. So the relationship starts to deteriorate after Depp starts to use

00:14:33.360 drugs and alcohol again. And this is not like disputed, because as you look at how the case

00:14:39.080 proceeded through the various court systems, both sides submitted just troves of evidence that had

00:14:45.140 to be verified by both parties. So we have text message history, we have emails, we have transcripts

00:14:52.440 of calls, we have recordings, we have all of this evidence to assess how this relationship progressed.

00:14:58.140 And there were 14, you know, examples of violence that Amber testified to in the UK. And by looking

00:15:07.120 at those 14 incidents and how they were described, you can see that it was a very familiar cycle of

00:15:13.000 abuse began to emerge. It started just completely out of the blue, as these types of dynamics often

00:15:19.980 do. In a relationship, you have the honeymoon phase. So you're completely unsuspecting that

00:15:25.700 this is going to happen. And the first thing that Amber alleged that Depp did was while they were

00:15:31.200 just having a conversation, she made a joke about one of his tattoos that was actually referencing

00:15:36.480 his relationship with Winona Ryder from a very long time ago. And he snapped and he hit her,

00:15:43.680 she alleged. And so that was the very first moment that violence was introduced into the

00:15:50.100 relationship. And from that moment on, the pattern begins. And what you see is Depp immediately

00:15:56.780 apologizes and he ascribes the violence in the relationship to what he calls the monster,

00:16:02.640 which is the side of him that comes out when he's abusing drugs and alcohol.

00:16:06.880 Right. Like kind of distancing the person that he is from the person that he is when

00:16:10.620 he's abusing her, but it's the same person. Exactly. And the way that Johnny Depp describes

00:16:17.640 himself as the monster, he was doing this well before he ever even started dating Amber,

00:16:23.160 because some of those things that were entered into court as evidence showed him emailing people

00:16:28.720 talking about the monster before the relationship began. So this was a part of his personal history.

00:16:35.000 This was just the first time that she saw that side of him. And one thing that I come back to

00:16:40.420 a lot that is a really good resource for understanding the relationship is amber and

00:16:46.620 johnny had a mutual friend named io till it right and io testified during the trial so people are

00:16:52.920 already familiar with him um but in 2016 he actually wrote an op-ed for refinery 29 where

00:17:00.080 he explains why he called 9-1-1 for amber oh and in this op-ed he talks about how everyone loved

00:17:09.020 him like they loved johnny their group of friends was really close they lived in johnny's penthouses

00:17:15.400 he had offered them to their group of friends to live in they all had close relationships with him

00:17:20.520 so nobody jumped to accuse him of being an abuser and especially amber like that's what io says in

00:17:27.380 the essay is like she wanted to defend him she loved him more than anyone she made excuses for

00:17:33.060 him she wanted him to get better and so that's why she didn't leave because well and like in

00:17:40.300 getting ready for this episode i was listening to podcasts that were released this time last year

00:17:45.160 by people who were pretty uncritically covering this trial and and very much from the you know

00:17:51.220 hashtag amber turd is a liar lolol and it was pretty gross to listen to the way that people

00:17:58.360 trivialized what happened to her but also people did talk about the fact that there were a lot of 0.79

00:18:04.960 people in the kind of amber johnny orbit who were benefiting from their proximity to johnny depp

00:18:10.260 and how he was giving them places to live these penthouses these houses in the hills yada yada

00:18:15.320 but then somehow the conclusion that people were drawing when i was listening to these podcasts

00:18:18.960 from a year ago were like so obviously amber wanted to stay because she had a lot to gain

00:18:23.440 because she was mooching off of him and i was like wait that's what you're taking from this

00:18:27.740 like and not the fact that this would obviously make it harder for anybody to come out against

00:18:31.880 johnny depp yeah like it's it's a power dynamic but people were covering it as like basically like

00:18:36.460 well she's a gold digger so abuse is kind of the price that she pays whoops also she wasn't a gold

00:18:41.480 digger and the idea that like people come forward i mean and i know this has been talked about but

00:18:45.840 it it really does bear mentioning like the idea that people and especially women come forward

00:18:50.620 to gain something to gain fame to gain money like we don't live in a world where that works

00:18:58.000 and that is why this does not actually happen the way that people want it to happen yeah like

00:19:03.820 we don't live in a world and and this was showcased in this trial we don't live in a

00:19:08.860 world where women who come forward with abuse are valued are believed are listened to are much less

00:19:15.920 rewarded. And so and so this like constant thing of like, well, Amber was planning this from the

00:19:21.020 beginning so that she could then come forward and reap the benefits of coming forward about being an

00:19:25.700 abuse victim. It's like, what benefits? I mean, we saw it. We saw it last year. What benefits

00:19:30.400 did she reap? She was abused and now she can't go in public without being, you know, every 1.00

00:19:35.260 every paparazzi shop being disseminated across the entire Internet. Exactly. And she has no money. 1.00

00:19:40.760 Exactly. And also, people say that Amber planned all of this or that she made it all up so that she could benefit from the Me Too movement. But the Me Too movement didn't happen until after their relationship ended and she had already accused him of abuse.

00:19:56.260 Right. So the Me Too, their relationship ended when?

00:19:59.400 So they were married in 2015 and then they divorced in 2016.

00:20:05.040 And the Me Too movement was the end of 2017.

00:20:07.800 Yes.

00:20:08.100 So they separate at the end. They separate in 2016. Yes. And then in 2018, Amber writes an op-ed in the Washington Post that becomes the basis for this trial. Yes. And so at the time of the separation in 2016, it first made headlines because she got a temporary restraining order against him. And she went to court and she came out with a bruise on her face.

00:20:32.960 And so these photographs immediately come out. And there's this revisionist history narrative that right from the get go, people supported Amber and denounced Johnny Depp. But that did not happen. And that's what her op ed was actually about was, you know, she came forward as a victim of domestic violence in a pre Me Too era. The second she stepped out of that courthouse with that bruise on her face, there were people outside chanting at her, calling her a liar.

00:20:59.420 Right.

00:20:59.580 So from the very minute she accused him of abuse, the whole world was against her.

00:21:03.000 Right.

00:21:03.360 And like we look back on her decision to come forward in a quote unquote post Me Too era

00:21:09.100 that we live in now.

00:21:10.100 And we're like, yeah, well, she was just riding the wave and, you know, into the sunset.

00:21:14.640 And it's like, no, the wave didn't exist yet.

00:21:16.160 There has never been a particularly empowered time for women to come forward about being

00:21:20.300 victims of abuse.

00:21:21.120 But like if there ever was one where that did not exist at all, like this was that time.

00:21:25.040 This was very much pre-Me Too.

00:21:26.660 Yes.

00:21:26.940 And so after she got the temporary restraining order and things settled down a little bit, she and Depp came out with a joint statement where they said that their relationship was volatile at times but was ultimately a loving relationship, and they said neither party had made false accusations for gain.

00:21:44.620 So at that point in time, there's no argument on the table that there was some sort of violence in the relationship.

00:21:50.440 And then things start to change because Depp acquires new legal counsel and his new legal counsel has a strategy in place to flip the tables.

00:22:01.960 And all of a sudden, Amber's not the victim.

00:22:04.880 She's the abuser.

00:22:06.160 And this is a really common strategy that abusers use called DARVO, which stands for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.

00:22:14.100 So you're denying that you're the abuser, and then you're reversing the attack and saying, actually, you abused me. And so this is a very old tactic, but we've seen it used with great success in the Depp-Herd trial because it's being reframed in the context of the Me Too movement.

00:22:31.000 Well, and this is a kind of manipulation of the facts that Amber Heard will end up having hurled against her by everyone alive.

00:22:39.580 Like Amber Heard is a manipulative psychopath when it's actually like, no, Johnny Depp's lawyers were manipulative psychopaths.

00:22:45.940 But like that couldn't be true because he's Jack Sparrow. 0.92

00:22:48.480 Right.

00:22:48.960 And like he has such a cool demeanor on the stand.

00:22:51.880 Yes.

00:22:52.340 Like that.

00:22:52.880 So that is one of the things that drives me so crazy is people were like, he did such a good job in court and she did such a bad job.

00:23:00.300 And I'm like, he's one of the greatest actors of all time.

00:23:03.560 Right.

00:23:04.040 And like, I mean, yeah, it was just people being like, how could he lie?

00:23:08.220 He, you know, he talked like this.

00:23:10.780 I'm like, we are watching a television show.

00:23:13.620 Yeah.

00:23:14.140 And we shouldn't be.

00:23:15.200 We all need to turn it off.

00:23:16.520 Yeah.

00:23:16.820 So in 2018, she publishes this op-ed in The Washington Post where she describes being,

00:23:21.680 you know, the face of women who come forward with abuse and then facing society's wrath, 0.98

00:23:26.720 Which, by all means of evidence that we have, is true. 1.00

00:23:30.640 Exactly.

00:23:31.380 Yes.

00:23:31.920 So she writes the 2018 op-ed, which, by the way, was not even that big of a deal.

00:23:37.200 Like, before the 2022 defamation trial, I don't think people were widely reading or

00:23:42.960 widely sharing this op-ed.

00:23:44.460 It wasn't that big of a deal.

00:23:45.120 No, it was not a viral essay.

00:23:46.940 No.

00:23:47.260 By any means.

00:23:48.120 No.

00:23:48.420 But they saw an opportunity.

00:23:49.940 And that is what is so vexing about all of this, is like, people are like, she can't

00:23:55.220 leave him alone.

00:23:56.440 What are you talking about?

00:23:58.040 She wrote an op-ed where she didn't name him.

00:24:00.620 And then his lawyers proceeded to sue her for defamation across multiple continents.

00:24:06.760 First, they sue her in the UK and they lose.

00:24:10.060 Then they sue her in the US in a state where neither of them have ever lived, where they

00:24:14.620 never went in their relationship together.

00:24:16.580 The only reason they were allowed to do it in Virginia is because that's where the Washington

00:24:19.880 Post is published.

00:24:21.000 And it's like, yeah, she's obviously the one in this situation who's like seeking 0.99

00:24:25.000 attention and fame and money which is why they are suing her across the globe yeah like what

00:24:30.860 it's over over over an essay that he was not named in yeah and they also are building their

00:24:38.060 case around the idea that her op-ed had damaged his career which is really laughable right

00:24:45.520 i'm laughing right well and i mean yeah and look at their careers now also

00:24:54.380 Like Johnny Depp is arguably more famous and loved than he's ever been in his life

00:24:58.340 Like I'm frankly a little bit scared to put out this episode

00:25:01.180 Because I know that people who have Johnny Depp stan accounts

00:25:04.180 Are going to be in my DMs like oh I used to like you

00:25:07.580 He just like walked in Rihanna's Savage by Fenty show

00:25:11.740 Or he was there or something

00:25:12.920 And like she like I said like she can't really leave her home

00:25:15.900 Yeah

00:25:16.280 So the trial ensues

00:25:18.100 And Amber has a mountain of evidence that shows she was abused

00:25:23.820 And then Johnny Depp also has evidence that she, at points, fought back.

00:25:30.440 Yes.

00:25:31.280 And yes.

00:25:32.060 And basically, so in 2020, Johnny Depp's team leaked some recordings to the Daily Mail.

00:25:38.740 Right.

00:25:39.120 Notoriously anti-women tabloid, the Daily Mail.

00:25:42.280 Right.

00:25:42.600 Which was instrumental in Britney Spears' downfall. 0.94

00:25:46.000 Yes.

00:25:46.360 Which has been instrumental in Meghan Markle.

00:25:48.900 in all of these attacks on prominent women you know these tabloids appear as these characters 0.97

00:25:54.260 but everyone accepted it uncritically and was like no this time it's legit because amber heard sucks

00:25:58.720 right and you know the audio that they released that i think i would argue is the overwhelming

00:26:05.100 piece of evidence that people cite when they say that she abused can i guess is it the one where

00:26:10.340 she's like tell them i hit you yeah see if they believe you yeah yeah because i mean i wasn't

00:26:15.000 even paying close attention to the trial but like i at the time like that was like one you could not

00:26:19.340 escape because what did she say in the audio so in the audio they're having an argument and johnny

00:26:25.600 brings forward the idea that he's gonna accuse her of abuse and she laughs and she's like tell

00:26:31.180 the world johnny that i abused you like man i'm a victim of abuse too and she's laughing because 0.81

00:26:39.600 it's so ridiculous because to her, at this point, she's lived through multiple years of this man 0.98

00:26:45.180 beating her up. And there are witnesses. I feel so comfortable saying that Johnny Depp beat her 0.95

00:26:51.180 up because A, it was proven in court in the UK. And B, Ayo Tillett Wright witnessed a bloody pillow.

00:26:59.500 He witnessed clumps of hair on the floor. People witnessed Depp pushing her, shoving her,

00:27:04.540 hitting her. One of her friends testified that she wrapped herself around Amber's body

00:27:09.440 during one of Johnny's angry, violent outrages to protect her

00:27:14.320 because it was so common in their relationship by that point

00:27:18.240 that he would be beating on her.

00:27:20.520 And so when she said that...

00:27:21.980 Right. It's like shocking.

00:27:23.640 Like, a woman who's endured years of abuse

00:27:26.260 responds to abuse in a way that isn't, like, super PC.

00:27:30.100 Exactly.

00:27:30.820 And, like, it is worth saying that on its face,

00:27:33.080 if you look at that audio, if you listen to that audio as we all did,

00:27:36.200 clipped out of context, out of the context of their years-long

00:27:38.800 horrible relationship of him abusing her yeah like it's a bad thing to say like it's a bad thing to

00:27:44.000 to trivialize male victims of abuse it's a bad thing to to trivialize anyone's abuse and it's

00:27:49.480 a bad thing to threaten the way that society does not care about abuse victims and like weaponize

00:27:54.160 that against someone who you're in an argument with like but i'm not here and i don't think

00:27:58.720 you're here to argue that like that was a good thing to say right it's just also not the point

00:28:03.940 Yeah, because it's just like by the time you get to that stage of the abusive relationship, this is extremely common victim behavior because it's like when you've been in a relationship with someone for years that has been abusive, they've built an entire fake reality around you through manipulation and coercion and gaslighting.

00:28:25.940 they've literally driven you insane. You've gone crazy because you've been abused for years.

00:28:31.540 And so we see victims behave in ways that are being mischaracterized in the post-MeToo era,

00:28:40.240 because it's very common for victims to do things like tell their abuser, hey, like, don't leave,

00:28:45.840 like screaming at them, like, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave. Because something abusers do

00:28:49.960 is they give their victims the silent treatment and they stonewall them and they leave them

00:28:54.240 feeling trapped and so the behaviors that victims often engage in toward the end of the relationship

00:29:00.320 when you're just looking at them out of context and you have an untrained sort of mind when you're

00:29:06.060 looking at the abusive dynamics you might be like that person must be the abuser right and i think

00:29:10.640 something that the you know one of perhaps the shortcomings of the me too movement and why it

00:29:18.020 maybe didn't prepare us for this moment to believe amber heard is that it framed the victim versus

00:29:25.660 abuser dynamic as something where like in order to be a victim you must lie down and let yourself

00:29:31.660 be abused and that is sometimes the case you know especially when we're talking about children who

00:29:38.000 are abused you know people who are entirely powerless but it didn't really set us up for

00:29:42.600 this moment to look at Amber Heard, who is being abused and at points fought back, you know,

00:29:48.680 verbally, emotionally, physically. Like Amber Heard behaved in ways that I'm sure she regrets

00:29:55.620 at certain points and that and that were unsavory and that were cruel. Yes. But that doesn't make

00:30:01.540 her not a victim of abuse. Right. And that's the heart of this. Yes. We're not arguing whether or

00:30:07.780 not everything she said was good and right. We're arguing that she was a victim of abuse and she

00:30:11.720 was and there's mountains of evidence to support that but everything became so messy and everyone

00:30:16.900 became so obsessed with dissecting every detail of everything she said on the stand which is

00:30:23.760 understandable but because it's a it's a court of law but then there became these moments where

00:30:29.720 like the poop on the bed and like the donation stuff and the milani cosmetics palette where

00:30:35.500 people found ways to find what they considered to be a lie in her testimony. And that proved that

00:30:42.820 not only was she lying about whether or not she pooped on the bed or whether or not this was the

00:30:49.900 exact color corrector palette she used. And we'll get into those in a second. Yeah. Because those

00:30:53.940 are the few details that I do want to just like debunk quickly. But not only did she lie about 0.94

00:30:59.120 those things, but she must be lying about everything. She must be lying about being abused 0.94

00:31:02.640 at all. And therefore, anything that we the public say or tweet or, you know, or any way that we

00:31:10.280 abuse her is justified because she is an insane, nasty woman who is trying to ruin the life of 0.99

00:31:16.520 Jack Sparrow. Yes, exactly. And what is so hypocritical about that is when people point 1.00

00:31:21.780 out the very obviously abusive things that Johnny Depp says and does, his defenders will say he's a

00:31:28.680 victim so he's allowed to do that like for example he texts his group chat and says i want global

00:31:35.800 humiliation for amber he plots it all out and that's exactly what he got of course it was

00:31:41.380 didn't he say he wanted to like rape her dead body or something yeah yeah and you bring up those text

00:31:46.740 messages and you're like hey is it appropriate for someone to talk about their partner this way 0.95

00:31:51.360 and people will with a straight face be like he was being abused so that makes it okay

00:31:56.100 right where the logic the same logic cannot be applied to amber who like at one point

00:32:00.460 made an off-color remark about you know how the world wouldn't believe johnny yeah because she

00:32:05.400 was actually being abused for years on end and of course she was in a moment of desperation and i'm

00:32:09.700 not saying what she said was right but she said it and we're like yeah she was a victim of abuse

00:32:13.600 that's how she was behaving and people were like nope nope but jack sparrow sorry i gotta call

00:32:17.440 stop calling him jack sparrow but like let's get into the three not the three but three of i feel

00:32:23.820 like the big moments that people turned into like internet sensations in order to harass and abuse 0.98

00:32:29.920 her because apparently she was a manipulative lying psychopath so the first one is amber turd 0.79

00:32:36.660 yes do you want to catch us up on amber turd yes and i had to this is actually so interesting 0.84

00:32:42.360 because like so many people knew about the trial but didn't know all the details and one of my

00:32:48.920 friends didn't realize that amber turd was supposed to refer to her actually shitting in his bed 0.99

00:32:56.180 right i just thought it was a nasty nickname that people gave to her it's like ha ha turd rhymes 0.99

00:33:00.840 with herd i did not realize there was a detail about shit in a bed yes i was actually i was 0.97

00:33:06.240 really thrown off when i heard about this because it is bizarre like let me say that up front like 0.84

00:33:09.980 this is a bizarre detail yes which is why it made for such great content yes and it's so bizarre

00:33:14.820 that I think people were just like, it has to be true.

00:33:17.400 Right.

00:33:17.800 So do you want to explain what...

00:33:19.560 Let's get into it.

00:33:20.600 Let's get into Amber Chard.

00:33:21.700 Let's get into it because let's examine this allegation

00:33:25.960 that Amber Heard pooped in Johnny Depp's bed.

00:33:29.020 Right.

00:33:29.180 And we'll start with Johnny Depp and what he has had to say

00:33:32.880 about this very topic.

00:33:34.680 Because well before the trial, Johnny Depp once texted his assistant 0.97

00:33:39.340 and asked him to shit in the doorway of Amber's room 0.97

00:33:43.580 so that she would come across a giant turd oh so he tried to do this one he tried to do this 0.99

00:33:50.400 he want okay he wanted to shit okay but in the same way that like so much of what he says and 0.96

00:33:55.800 does is projection the amber turd thing is entirely projection because it was initially his idea oh 0.97

00:34:01.880 and i didn't know about this yeah yeah no it's nuts and like again this is a text message that

00:34:07.260 was entered into the court as evidence so it had to be approved by both sides like there's no denying

00:34:12.200 that he once texted his assistant and asked him to do that.

00:34:14.980 And he asked his assistant, he was like, 1.00

00:34:16.560 shit in Amber Heard's doorway, I want her to encounter human feces. 0.99

00:34:20.080 Yeah, he was like, this will be so funny. 0.99

00:34:22.400 Okay, so, but then, but that's not what we actually talked about with Amber Turd.

00:34:26.520 Right, yes.

00:34:27.140 So, the...

00:34:28.580 The Amber Turd allegations.

00:34:30.500 The Amber Turd allegations. 1.00

00:34:32.340 So, the other, so, okay, there was shit in the bed. 0.99

00:34:36.220 We've talked about this. 0.99

00:34:37.160 Yes. 1.00

00:34:37.360 There's a photo of the shit in the bed. 1.00

00:34:40.800 The bed that Johnny and Amber slept in together, there was fecal matter. 1.00

00:34:45.200 Yes. 0.60

00:34:46.120 I feel so ridiculous trying to talk about this. 0.73

00:34:49.020 I know. 1.00

00:34:49.600 There was shit in the bed. 0.99

00:34:51.320 Yeah. 1.00

00:34:51.920 One morning.

00:34:52.700 Yes.

00:34:53.260 And the housekeeper found it.

00:34:54.580 And the housekeeper found it.

00:34:55.740 Yes.

00:34:56.260 And so Johnny accuses this of being Amber or one of her friends.

00:35:00.720 Okay.

00:35:01.280 And so that's where it started.

00:35:02.200 It was after a night where they had been fighting, right?

00:35:05.600 Yes.

00:35:05.960 Right.

00:35:06.340 And he wasn't there because that's like a key detail.

00:35:08.660 Okay.

00:35:08.880 And the judge in the UK case brought this up because he was like, why would Amber or one of her friends do this if Johnny wasn't even going to be there?

00:35:17.000 Right. So Johnny and his team claim, you know, Johnny and Amber had a really bad fight the night before.

00:35:22.540 Johnny stormed out. He was going to sleep at one of his other mansions that night.

00:35:28.860 And Amber was so pissed at him that she shit in his bed. 1.00

00:35:34.560 Yeah. 1.00

00:35:34.740 And the housekeeper found it in the morning. And this was framed as like Amber Heard is insane.

00:35:38.340 Yes. 1.00

00:35:38.560 And she shit in his bed to get back at him after they fought. 0.99

00:35:43.120 Which, like, I have questions about it. 1.00

00:35:44.560 I mean, I've seen a picture of the shit. 1.00

00:35:46.900 Like, I'm not, you know, a forensic expert in, like, examining where shit comes from 1.00

00:35:52.460 and whether, because they had a dog and people said that it was the dog or was it the dog 0.98

00:35:56.280 or was it Amber? 0.99

00:35:56.880 But, like, there was shit in the bed. 0.99

00:35:59.580 The thing that doesn't make sense to me is that if Johnny wasn't going to be there, then 0.99

00:36:03.160 why would Amber do this as some act of revenge?

00:36:06.340 Yes. 1.00

00:36:06.620 If you're going to shit in someone's bed to make their life miserable, shouldn't you shit in the bed that they're sleeping in? 1.00

00:36:10.040 Like, Johnny wasn't there. 1.00

00:36:10.920 Exactly.

00:36:11.860 And, like, the most important context. 0.99

00:36:13.560 I'm just saying if I were to shit in someone's bed, you know, which, like, you know, who's to say? 1.00

00:36:17.180 The cherry on the top is they have this dog who has a long track record of shitting on the bed. 1.00

00:36:23.940 But people are like, no, it couldn't have been a dog. 1.00

00:36:26.220 It's definitely Amber because she's crazy. 0.87

00:36:27.740 Right. 1.00

00:36:27.940 There's literally a text message that Amber had sent to one of Johnny's employees after one night where they woke up and Amber texts him and is like, boo, shit all over Johnny. 0.99

00:36:38.040 I'm not even kidding. 1.00

00:36:39.380 She shit all over him in the middle of the night. 1.00

00:36:41.040 These are the details that people really sunk their teeth into when they were, you know, when influencers, podcasters, everyday people on Twitter, whatever, people in the news, when they were painting her as this like manipulative, insane woman who could never have been abused. 1.00

00:36:54.860 Like, these are the details that they used to paint her as that. 0.98

00:36:58.200 And understandably so, because, like, it is comically ridiculous, like, the idea of someone shitting in their partner's bed. 0.99

00:37:03.940 Yeah. 0.99

00:37:04.240 Like, it's, like, out of a movie.

00:37:05.560 Yes.

00:37:06.160 And I guess on this detail, we don't know, ultimately, if it was the dog or if it was Amber or one of Amber's friends. 0.99

00:37:13.380 But worst case scenario, like, if it was Amber who shit in the bed, an unsavory act, sure. 0.99

00:37:20.880 But, like, does it matter? 0.99

00:37:22.200 No.

00:37:22.680 Does it matter?

00:37:23.340 does it tell us anything about her being a liar about being abused like that's the thing that

00:37:28.800 doesn't really make sense to me no it's just a way to i think further dehumanize her and it also 1.00

00:37:34.620 strips away i think a quality that could have been used to her advantage which is that she's

00:37:40.460 a really beautiful woman and so this is something that's really interesting because people actually

00:37:45.420 are slightly prejudiced against beautiful women this is a real thing like there are real studies

00:37:51.280 that show, you know, whether it's because of intimidation or jealousy or sexualization,

00:37:57.260 whatever it is, people are less likely to view a beautiful woman as credible or a victim.

00:38:04.080 And so this is already something that is a dynamic with Amber, but I think that calling

00:38:09.720 her Amber Turd and creating this image of her like doing something so disgusting was

00:38:14.600 a way to further dehumanize her and also strip away that idea of having beauty or elegance 1.00

00:38:20.720 or tastefulness like it was a way to immediately present her as immature childish disgusting 0.89

00:38:27.680 and animalistic right and so it was very successful but it was all part of the smear campaign 0.77

00:38:34.500 right and it was it was like cartoonish and something that i return to a lot when i think

00:38:40.060 about this trial is all of the people who the second they're you know because people were just

00:38:45.400 being so extremely abusive towards amber online and like i feel like it's really hard for anyone

00:38:51.660 of any belief with regard to this case to look back on the things that were said to and about

00:38:56.480 amber heard on in the media and be like yeah that was all justified i mean actually there

00:39:01.460 definitely are a lot of people who believe that but like but like but i think normal people with

00:39:07.740 human empathy might i say would look back and be like that was really fucking wild the way that we 0.97

00:39:12.020 treated her and like the photoshopped pictures of her like like the shit i mean it's just it was 0.99

00:39:16.700 just crazy and i think a lot of people go well you know it's so important to recognize that men can 0.99

00:39:21.640 be victims of domestic abuse and it is bad that oftentimes we overlook that as a society but

00:39:27.980 that's not really what anyone's arguing and at the time relentless campaigns and jokes and videos

00:39:33.800 about amber turd isn't exactly doing anything for male victims of abuse no and we saw some of those

00:39:40.360 very same creators who made the Amber Heard hate propaganda in cases where there are male

00:39:47.100 abuse victims, with the leading example being Anthony Rapp and Kevin Spacey, did those people

00:39:52.860 support Anthony Rapp?

00:39:54.200 No.

00:39:54.680 No.

00:39:55.320 No.

00:39:55.960 They actually undermined Anthony Rapp because when Anthony-

00:39:59.720 Which Anthony Rapp is an actor.

00:40:01.840 Yes.

00:40:02.300 And he was in Rent, among a lot of other things.

00:40:05.440 He's wonderful.

00:40:06.580 I love Anthony Rapp.

00:40:07.440 Yeah, he's amazing.

00:40:07.980 But he was the one who, for context, he was the accuser who came forward accusing Kevin Spacey of sexual assault and kind of, you know, that was the end of Kevin Spacey.

00:40:18.080 Yes. Yeah. And at the time, I mean, there are obviously like there are many other allegations against Kevin Spacey, too.

00:40:24.740 When Anthony Rapp most recently was in court testifying about this, the jury did not side with him.

00:40:30.600 Yeah, he lost.

00:40:31.280 He lost.

00:40:31.900 Yeah.

00:40:32.040 And so all of the people who were making noise about male victims in support of Johnny Depp.

00:40:36.580 Were nowhere to be found.

00:40:37.260 nowhere to be found yeah if you know people want to talk about what this was really about like i

00:40:42.220 don't think it was about supporting male victims of abuse no i think maybe it was about supporting

00:40:46.480 johnny depp to an extent because they love johnny depp but it was people behaved in ways that were

00:40:50.800 so abusive to like an animalistic point yes and then the second any of it was questioned we we

00:40:58.460 just immediately go to this morally superior grandstand place of like well this is about

00:41:02.480 what amber heard represent amber heard is going to undermine future victims of assault you know

00:41:07.780 this is giving them a bad look and we're you know it was all and and we're defending male victims of

00:41:13.360 abuse it was like no you're just having fun harassing a woman yeah you're just enjoying the

00:41:18.960 savagery of this and and like at the very least admit that yeah this is not about changing society

00:41:25.920 for the better like i mean it's laughable like this is not this is not about any of that this

00:41:31.260 is just about you having fun dancing on a woman who's been abused exactly and because you see her

00:41:36.640 as more powerful than yourself you're just someone on twitter she's a rich and famous beautiful woman

00:41:40.620 yep and our culture loves to do this we do this over and over and over again and occasionally

00:41:48.520 people stop and are like why do we keep doing this right and then we do it again and then we

00:41:53.000 do it again and that's the and that's the really insidious underlining of all of this is that what

00:41:59.600 happened to Amber Heard contributed to a post-MeToo backlash that seeks to undermine all victims.

00:42:06.420 Right. You know, another thing that people really got a thrill out of, and I want to talk about this

00:42:11.600 because when this was all on TV last year, I was not like touching it with a 10-foot pole. I really,

00:42:16.680 it didn't feel like any of my business. And also just watching the way people were behaving online

00:42:20.400 around, it felt really gross to me. And I also have never watched Pirates of the Caribbean.

00:42:24.380 But one of the things that caught my eye was the Milani Cosmetics makeup palette thing. And this

00:42:29.480 is something that people really used to like again smear amber heard as like a psychopathic 0.93

00:42:34.780 liar yeah um so my understanding of it is amber heard you know because she was being physically 0.96

00:42:40.980 abused regularly she as many people who are abused too they cover up their bruises with makeup yes

00:42:47.540 and so her lawyer held up in court a color corrector slash concealer palette by the brand

00:42:55.280 milani cosmetics and was like this is like the palette that she used to hide her bruises

00:43:01.420 obviously that is not the exact palette like the physically exact palette that amber was using

00:43:07.720 but people immediately on social media were like wait a minute that's not the palette she was using

00:43:13.660 that's a newer palette when all that they meant was like this and i think she ended up on the

00:43:18.580 stand to be like this is like the palette that i was using it was a color correcting palette it was

00:43:24.160 a concealer palette similar to this one yeah milani cosmetics on tiktok they you know what

00:43:29.720 i'm going to say they the brand made a tiktok where they had some some corporate employees

00:43:36.740 from milani showing you know a screenshot of the palette the milani color correcting palette that

00:43:42.040 was held up in court and then to the to the tune in the background of like we're international

00:43:47.280 super spies like you know that song they basically did this like kind of spy movie reenactment where

00:43:53.320 they looked back and they said they showed that the exact palette that was held up in court came

00:43:58.340 out in 2017 you know that model of that concealer palette came out in 2017 so therefore it couldn't

00:44:04.860 have been the one that amber was using to cover up the bruises she got from her abusive partner

00:44:10.400 which like first of all even if they were claiming that was the exact palette which they weren't why 0.95

00:44:16.900 the fuck is a brand cashing in on this moment like while again while the trial is still going 0.96

00:44:23.080 on because that tiktok got millions of views and thousands and thousands and thousands and 1.00

00:44:28.080 thousands of comments being like oh my god milani you ate her up like like all like gonna go buy 0.99

00:44:33.520 milani now and i'm like truly fuck this cosmetics corporation for viewing the seriousness of this 0.99

00:44:40.440 moment and being like you know what content yeah that drove me insane it was really really wild 0.98

00:44:47.040 I think the examples that we saw of companies and entities trying to use this moment to their

00:44:53.960 advantage and profit off of it. And at the end of the day, it's just like, like you said,

00:44:58.540 this became a huge moment in the trial and how the public consumed it. Rather than Amber had

00:45:05.500 witnesses who testified to covering up her bruises. Amber had witnesses testifying to,

00:45:11.700 i literally saw him abuse her right and but but that was far less interesting than like a milani

00:45:19.400 super spies tiktok and that's what i mean like this wasn't a trial in a court this was a trial

00:45:24.800 by tiktok it was and we all suffered because of it yeah like collectively yeah and then and then 0.99

00:45:31.220 the last one fuck milani cosmetics like can i just like fuck milani cosmetics i've never bought it 0.99

00:45:36.760 again since then and i used to buy it i don't know if i ever did there are way better drugstore 0.98

00:45:40.740 brands there are um maybelline is kind of um and then the third the third kind of thing that i just

00:45:50.840 we need to debunk because it was it was a huge part of this was the donation yes scandal so do

00:45:55.080 you want to explain that yes so again and like this is a common theme is people seizing on details

00:46:01.800 that are extremely unrelated to the claims so initially when she first got that temporary

00:46:08.980 restraining order, you saw Depp's side indicate like, oh, Amber is just making salacious claims

00:46:15.940 to try to get a bigger divorce settlement. And so because of that, like many women who are abused, 1.00

00:46:23.000 Amber asked to not get spousal support. So she actually was entitled to a lot of money 1.00

00:46:29.380 and she declined it. When they got divorced.

00:46:32.480 When they got divorced, yes. However, in the divorce proceedings, she was supposed to get 0.99

00:46:37.280 a $7 million settlement, which would be paid, this is key, which would be paid in installments.

00:46:43.000 So Depp didn't have to give her a $7 million lump sum. He had to pay it over time. And so

00:46:49.640 her public statement was that she would be giving it to charity.

00:46:53.380 Right. She wanted to show from the beginning, like, this is not about money. I'm not trying

00:46:57.540 to get rich off this. Yeah. And also in the divorce, all she kept were the dogs. He kept

00:47:03.240 the vehicles the houses the private island and again she's literally entitled and they did they

00:47:08.600 didn't have a prenup so she was entitled she was entitled to all of this she could have taken all 0.83

00:47:12.160 of it right she's the she's the worst gold digger in the world right well and that's the thing i

00:47:17.260 mean so much of johnny of johnny depp's fan base that was like this was all predicated on the

00:47:23.600 notion that she wanted money and the reason that she had lied and the reason that she did all it

00:47:27.660 is because like she is a gold digger we're like if she was a gold digger i mean like she's she's

00:47:32.620 she did not do a good job of gold digging exactly so she does make a payment to the children's

00:47:39.060 hospital i think it's the children's hospital in la which is part of the emotional propaganda 0.61

00:47:44.260 against amber heard is like she withheld this money from sick and dying children right and

00:47:49.260 they're saying that she lied and what's the difference between donation and pledging right

00:47:53.440 because she pledged to give them the installments of her divorce settlement as they came in right

00:47:59.020 and people were like oh but the check she wrote wasn't for seven million dollars it was only for

00:48:02.680 like the total came out to like one something million dollars yeah and it's like well yeah

00:48:07.060 that's all the money that she had received at that point right and then people were saying that

00:48:11.360 because she did not send them seven million dollars that this was evidence that she was 0.96

00:48:16.700 fraudulent she was trying to you know by talking about that she was giving money to this money to 0.56

00:48:20.900 charity she was framing herself as this like philanthropic individual who wasn't in it for 0.95

00:48:25.060 the money, but that actually she was lying about all of that and she was going to give a little

00:48:28.740 bit of money and then keep the rest. When in actuality, my understanding is that not only

00:48:33.580 did she not have the rest because it was being paid to her in installments, but also at this

00:48:37.480 point, like Johnny Depp's legal team is now hounding her. Yes. And so a lot of the money

00:48:42.960 that she is receiving has to go to her own legal counsel to defend herself. Exactly. Which she did 1.00

00:48:47.980 not foresee. And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't she reach out to the Children's Hospital

00:48:52.280 or wherever else she was supposed to give money to

00:48:54.360 and be like, hey, my finances aren't looking the way

00:48:57.260 that I thought they were going to look

00:48:58.440 because now I need to defend myself 0.99

00:49:00.180 against all this legal bullshit. 0.99

00:49:01.720 Yes. 0.98

00:49:02.640 So sorry, like the money isn't going to come in

00:49:04.960 as smoothly as I thought it was going to.

00:49:06.600 Exactly.

00:49:07.380 But that's not how the public received this.

00:49:09.020 The public received this as she said 1.00

00:49:10.600 she was going to give money to poor and sick

00:49:11.780 and dying children.

00:49:12.680 She lied.

00:49:13.360 She kept it for herself

00:49:14.020 so she could go buy like 100 Chanel bags.

00:49:15.860 Yeah. 1.00

00:49:16.560 And Amber Heard is a liar and insane. 1.00

00:49:18.400 And it's like, what? 0.99

00:49:19.160 That's not, that's not what happened.

00:49:20.740 It's not what happened.

00:49:21.520 And it's just so twisted and like part of the manipulation from Depp himself, because it's like his abusive strategies include gaslighting.

00:49:32.020 And now the entire public has joined in on the gaslighting because it's his he's the reason why she couldn't make this donation in full.

00:49:39.960 Right. And they're blaming her because he was suing the fuck out of her. 0.96

00:49:43.160 Exactly. And like that's and and and to be clear, if she had withheld money that she said she was going to donate,

00:49:51.140 because she wanted to buy a bunch of handbags and houses and cars and get rich do i think it would

00:49:57.280 have been a pretty awful thing to do you're like yeah i do that would be really shitty does it have

00:50:03.840 anything to do with the fact that she was abused does it make her a liar about the abuse no right 0.98

00:50:09.920 it has nothing to do with that and like i between the milani thing and this and the shit it's like 0.90

00:50:14.960 people were looking at these details particularly this one about the donations that had this this 0.79

00:50:20.520 was about her activities completely outside of whether or not she was abused and yet people were

00:50:25.980 like well if we make up some story about how she had a plan from the beginning to cash in on this 0.99

00:50:32.720 whole thing to cash in on the divorce to cash in on the abuse if that was true and that she lied 0.98

00:50:36.880 about this and that she lied about giving money to the children's hospital then she lied about 1.00

00:50:40.080 everything yeah when like she could have lied i don't think she did lie about the money in the 0.84

00:50:45.260 charity situation but she could have lied about it and it would have made her like a reasonably 1.00

00:50:49.960 shitty person. But it would not have made her any less of a victim of abuse. Absolutely. I want 0.96

00:50:54.860 people to really think about it. And like, think to yourself, put yourself in the shoes of a

00:51:00.060 predator. If you are a predator, and you are seeking out someone to abuse, you are going to

00:51:06.360 seek out vulnerabilities, different types of vulnerabilities, you're going to seek out ways

00:51:11.060 that will make someone easy to be manipulated. And you'll also seek out ways to discredit people

00:51:16.780 after the fact. Abusers specifically seek out people who they know aren't going to be believed.

00:51:22.860 It's all part of the cycle of abuse. And just because somebody is a criminal, a liar, mentally

00:51:29.400 ill, an abuser themselves, none of that disqualifies you from being a victim. In fact, people who are

00:51:36.640 mentally ill are more likely to be victimized because of this reason. And I think this brings

00:51:42.120 us to the myth of the perfect victim because amber heard after enduring years of abuse behaved

00:51:48.680 in ways you know emotionally verbally physically in ways that i think most people would disagree

00:51:56.020 with in ways that were cruel in ways that i'm sure she regrets but that's also like the case

00:52:03.280 for a surprising amount of domestic abuse victims and it's that's not a reality that i think we're

00:52:08.560 willing to accept like we want victims to be to be completely like docile and have a clean slate

00:52:15.520 and be you know this quote-unquote perfect victim who has never done anything wrong and if you claim

00:52:20.980 to be and this is what I kind of feel when I look at the way the internet behaved and the public

00:52:26.520 behaved you know a lot of people who say that they support victims but did not support Amber Heard

00:52:30.980 because she was not the type of victim that they would like to support if you're waiting for if

00:52:35.920 you're waiting for that person to support you're never going to find them exactly and you don't

00:52:39.320 support victims exactly yes it is so frustrating to hear people espouse this view of survivor

00:52:49.900 acceptance without actually accepting any survivors right and that's what you get from

00:52:56.840 the legions of people who identify as supporters of johnny depp and this men to movement it's not

00:53:04.860 about embracing a new kind of survivor. Alex Winter is a prominent survivor. And he's talked

00:53:11.980 about how in the Me Too movement, there was already space for male survivors. We don't need 0.85

00:53:16.280 to have a backlash against the Me Too movement in order to make space for male survivors.

00:53:21.420 What the backlash is doing is it is essentially a scaled up effort of Darvo, in which we are

00:53:29.980 actually going against the victims right and we're taking the abusers and we're falsely

00:53:36.480 positioning them as the true victims which is extremely dangerous yeah obviously rain fisher

00:53:43.200 kwan who is a writer and a feminist who i think is just brilliant and also 21 years old which is

00:53:49.100 insane um she wrote in her stubs sub stack essay about this uh two quotes that i'm going to read 0.99

00:53:55.600 And again, this is not to say that Amber Heard is perfect. 1.00

00:53:58.360 She was cruel. 1.00

00:53:59.360 She was callous.

00:54:00.380 She's lied, just as Depp has.

00:54:02.300 Most importantly, like many, many women trapped in long-term abusive relationships,

00:54:06.160 she absolutely engaged in emotional toxicity and a degree of physical violence.

00:54:10.560 For anyone familiar with cycles of domestic abuse, this is nothing new.

00:54:13.780 Reactive violence is an extremely common result of psychological degradation

00:54:17.160 and fear responses that come with sustained abuse.

00:54:20.080 Of course, violence is never okay,

00:54:21.560 But the complete dehumanization of women who behave imperfectly in torturous circumstances is just one half of a catch-22, which conspires to keep all women silent. 0.59

00:54:31.600 If you were abused and did nothing, they'll say you weren't abused at all, and so you're a liar and therefore an abuser.

00:54:36.960 If you were abused and you fought back, it means you were an abuser to begin with.

00:54:40.920 And then the second quote, a little bit later in the essay, she says,

00:54:43.380 Much of popular discourse acts as though there are only two feasible options when it comes to herds and really any woman's innocence. 1.00

00:54:50.000 She's either an evil, psychotic manipulator who's guilty on all accounts,

00:54:53.520 or she must have been a perfectly innocent angel who's never done anything wrong. 0.89

00:54:57.540 I don't think Amber Heard is a feminist hero.

00:54:59.820 And I'm not saying this to make my support of her more palatable or to perform impartiality.

00:55:04.460 I'm saying it because she shouldn't have to be.

00:55:06.260 I think it's essential, to a much larger point, and in reality, far more controversial,

00:55:10.460 to believe Amber Heard is a victim while also acknowledging her wrongdoings.

00:55:14.140 Once you start pushing the idea that a woman has to be perfect in order to be believed,

00:55:17.540 you head down a road that ends with a systemic exorcism of any woman too human to be a good

00:55:22.720 victim. She ate. She said that better than I could have ever. You know, we're getting to the 0.61

00:55:30.460 end here, but Amber Heard did not make money off of this situation in the way that all of her critics

00:55:39.420 seem to believe was her goal. But I know you, Kat, as someone who has long covered influencer

00:55:46.500 culture, there were some people who did make a lot of money off of this situation. Would you

00:55:51.120 like to talk about that? I sure would. So, you know, when you look at the pro-Johnny Depp movement,

00:56:00.700 it started well before the 2022 trial. It started back in 2020, actually, and maybe even before,

00:56:09.860 because he always had fans. And so he always had people who were willing to defend him.

00:56:13.200 But you actually saw more of a campaign forming around the idea that Amber Heard was the true

00:56:20.040 abuser. And so for years, you've had various content creators on different platforms,

00:56:25.620 mostly YouTube, starting to build this narrative and starting to build this framing. And the

00:56:31.320 framing, I always refer to it as just Johnny Good, Amber Bad. Whatever happens in the case,

00:56:36.160 they frame it through this narrative of Johnny Good, Amber Bad. And so the content that they're

00:56:40.680 creating is ultimately biased absolutely and so by creating biased content in support of johnny

00:56:47.700 and against amber they're able to direct the general atmosphere online because they're priming

00:56:54.420 people before the trial even begins they're priming people to believe that he's the good guy

00:57:00.500 and she's the bad guy and that's what we're going to see and so even when you had for example there

00:57:05.160 were many legal commentators who covered this and a lot of people were like oh i watched the

00:57:10.340 trial every day i watched it on youtube as people were providing their legal commentary and if you

00:57:16.420 actually watch that commentary they're doing it with this bias they're doing it with this slant

00:57:21.840 and they're doing it because they're making money directly from that bias right because people

00:57:27.120 weren't tuning into videos that supported amber herder were you know at the least bit critical

00:57:33.680 of johnny depp yeah and the only reason that they would tune into those videos as they tuned into

00:57:37.280 your tweets at the time kat were to then get in your messages and dms and comments to abuse you

00:57:43.700 in the way that they were abusing ever heard yeah like they really only wanted to positively tune

00:57:47.340 into content that was supporting johnny depp and tune in they did i remember watching the verdict

00:57:52.580 which was the only part of this that i watched live because at that point it was like okay this

00:57:56.940 is the media event of of the decade um i remember watching it on like the law and whatever channel

00:58:02.160 on youtube and it was like four million people were watching the live stream at like one single

00:58:07.300 live stream on youtube yeah i have never seen that many people watching like charlie d'amelio

00:58:12.220 at the height of her 2020 covid tiktok fame on her instagram account she would do lives and i

00:58:18.400 remember she hit like 250 000 people watching her live stream at once which was insane that is a 1.00

00:58:24.140 fucking lot of people to like a quarter of a million people watching this one girl this had 0.93

00:58:30.040 let me do 16 times that mad as hard he's had 16 times that amount of people watching 0.99

00:58:36.860 the verdict live like people were tuned the fuck in and every single comment on that live stream 0.99

00:58:41.840 was like i mean the most abusive carceral just like you know hit her where it hurts you know 0.93

00:58:48.280 people people wanted to see her fall yeah and there were so many youtubers and tiktokers and

00:58:56.480 instagrammers and people on twitter who who are making enormous amounts of money and gaining these

00:59:04.100 enormous followings by covering this with varying degrees of sincerity donald trump jr was tweeting

00:59:13.240 about hashtag amber turd and like there was not to be clear the harassment of amber heard did not

00:59:19.320 have a left-wing right-wing divide it was basically everybody yes and you know i think

00:59:24.820 that sometimes you can have surprising agreements with people you might not otherwise agree with

00:59:28.600 but like i think in principle if you see donald trump jr tweet something and you are tweeting a

00:59:35.140 similar thing that you should probably stop and be like hang on you know it's i mean it's like when

00:59:39.900 like anna casparian a few weeks ago was like tweeting all the turf shit and then ben shapiro

00:59:44.080 was retweeting her and it was like anna you might i don't know like if ben shapiro started retweeting 0.65

00:59:49.080 me i might be like am i wrong yeah you know exactly which like a surprisingly small amount

00:59:55.960 of people were considering maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm adding to something yeah maybe i'm piling on

01:00:01.020 to something that is bad and in a year will be discussed on a podcast as being bad what was

01:00:06.340 interesting to me was a lot of this content that was being generated right like it brought this

01:00:11.260 incredibly serious thing which was domestic abuse and it used the details of the case you know the

01:00:18.580 milani palette the cartoonishly ridiculous like poop story and it used those details to kind of

01:00:26.740 turn this into like not a story about real people being abused not a real woman being abused but

01:00:33.020 like a tv show that we could like extract content out of yeah and what was what's interesting to me

01:00:39.600 is like recently so if you're listening i don't i don't know how how many of you are consume beauty

01:00:45.380 content heavily but like i have i have since the early aughts i have since like the early days of

01:00:51.440 pre-bi sister tati westbrook like i'm i'm tuned the fuck into that and so recently there was 1.00

01:00:56.800 mascara gate who if if you didn't catch wind of it it was michaela neguera who's the biggest beauty 1.00

01:01:03.840 tiktoker who allegedly i mean it knows it was pretty obvious she she she did an ad for a l'oreal 1.00

01:01:11.760 mascara where at the end of the ad she had clearly applied false eyelashes to make it look like the 0.75

01:01:18.480 mascara was doing a little more work than it was actually doing and for like two weeks you didn't 0.72

01:01:24.560 hear the end of this on the internet people it went from like sister i think you applied maybe

01:01:30.080 a demi wispy in there to like but then like you know after two weeks it would have been it was 1.00

01:01:35.200 like mikayla naguera is literally breaking the law right now in false advertising practices and 1.00

01:01:40.740 like she needs to be widely condemned and like we need to abuse her as much as possible so that

01:01:45.740 we can be doing a morally good thing and it was like wait a minute hold on like okay yeah maybe

01:01:51.280 she shouldn't have done the false lash but it was like it was a pretty small thing yeah like it was

01:01:57.760 it was like yeah you shouldn't apply a false lash when you're advertising mascara but like 1.00

01:02:02.360 she didn't fucking kill someone right but by the way that people reacted you would think that she

01:02:07.140 had yes and it was people were taking that issue and and watching the discourse around it like it 0.98

01:02:13.100 almost it felt the same as the way that people were talking about amber heard it was like which

01:02:19.080 was an incredibly serious thing in real life but people took it and kind of dumbed it down

01:02:22.900 yeah in the in the case of depp versus heard to a place where they could talk about it like as a tv

01:02:27.360 show you know or something or something that could be made that could make like you know content or

01:02:31.680 fun viral tiktoks about and then in this mascara gate situation which was a comparatively like

01:02:36.820 very small indiscretion on Michaela Naguera's behalf like people took that and amplified the 0.94

01:02:42.700 seriousness of it so it's like no it's it's not just that she put on a false lash that she broke

01:02:47.040 the law and it was like all of these things that we decide to get mad about in the public

01:02:52.000 you know in the court of TikTok they all reach this middle ground of serious of like commercially

01:02:58.940 acceptable seriousness where you know if someone is abused by their husband and now they're in

01:03:04.880 court for that it's like we dumb that down so it's not that serious where if we're adding to

01:03:10.980 the abuse that she's facing in the public eye we don't have to feel badly about it because it's not 0.99

01:03:14.380 that serious you know she's a rich and famous celebrity it was a funny little poop drama like

01:03:18.500 she'll be okay she'll she'll be rich and famous no matter what then from the other end we take

01:03:22.100 things like the the bi sister vitamin drama of like you know and or or Michaela Naguera applying

01:03:28.100 a false lash and we're like no no it's serious it's not just that it's seriousness enough that

01:03:31.560 we have to make content about this for two weeks yes yeah it's like a false equilibrium right

01:03:38.260 totally that treats that treats every like public indiscretion as like an equally important debate

01:03:44.380 that we must weigh in on yeah and you see how it how we've reached this point of internet culture

01:03:49.700 through the creation of careers that are based around commenting on cultural events which is

01:03:57.880 what we both do which is right which to be clear is what you and i both do and like i don't that's

01:04:03.700 always like commentary has always existed like you know news anchors do it and bloggers did it

01:04:10.000 in the early 2010 like now everybody does it but the hard thing is that now that we're all

01:04:14.740 commentators there's no real guide line of ethics involved and that's when you have these people

01:04:21.600 taking something like the amber herd trial and turning it into a sleazy entertainment spectacle

01:04:26.180 because like why not everything is commentary everything is consumable yeah and we should all

01:04:31.240 have an opinion on everything all the time yeah and i think that in the in the amber herd trial

01:04:36.320 everybody failed here like i'm a representative of the media and i think that the media failed

01:04:42.320 drastically what ended up happening is that the first media outlets to really dive into the details

01:04:49.100 were tabloids yeah and they did it irresponsibly and they did it in a biased way yeah and then

01:04:54.280 the people who picked up on that were the content creators. And first of all, media was too slow to

01:04:59.440 respond because we let all of this percolate and develop in sort of an underground way that when

01:05:05.060 we got to the public desire to have nonstop information around this trial, we had already

01:05:10.900 failed to educate the public. We had already failed to deliver the news to them in a way that

01:05:16.300 they could comprehend because we've already failed if the entire population only wants Johnny

01:05:21.720 good Amber bad content. And I think that after the trial ended, we started to see some people

01:05:27.920 write think pieces about how we failed Amber and about how Amber really was the victim. And you

01:05:33.280 started to see more of a journalistic shift toward looking at the consequences of this.

01:05:39.740 But I think that where we failed as an industry and where we need to do better, and I think that

01:05:43.880 this can be mainstream news. I also think it can be content creators or just people online,

01:05:48.480 the consumers of all this information we have to become better at actually covering these things

01:05:54.640 fairly because what happened with amber heard is you couldn't actually find information that was

01:06:01.740 accurate if you searched if you googled amber heard defense during the trial you wouldn't get

01:06:06.940 anything like there were people you would get your tweets you get your tweets which like by the way

01:06:13.380 you were one of the few and in my eyes one of the more prominent voices who from the beginning was

01:06:19.180 like i stand with amber heard yeah could you like quickly describe what you faced as a result yes 0.98

01:06:26.240 yes and like when i when the kids they came the fuck after you yeah they came after me because 0.98

01:06:33.020 i was right period like from the beginning they were like oh shit this is a real threat to our 0.98

01:06:40.860 narrative right and not because you were like i am an amber heard stan and i loved her in x y or 0.85

01:06:47.420 z movie yep you were like no i'm a journalist who has no you know motive to take a side other than

01:06:55.280 the one that is correct yeah people and like this is such a common misconception that has followed

01:07:00.780 me throughout my career and i think it's like very very important is i don't have a monetary

01:07:07.880 incentive to support Amber Heard.

01:07:10.180 She's not paying me. 0.64

01:07:11.500 Her PR team isn't paying me.

01:07:13.420 NBC News pays me a salary, and that salary doesn't go up or down based on how popular

01:07:18.800 my takes or my content are.

01:07:20.860 It actually has nothing to do with my tweets at all.

01:07:23.440 That was all me.

01:07:24.540 All original thought.

01:07:25.640 Right.

01:07:26.000 So unless you have an Amber Heard stan account that no one is aware about, like now I'm

01:07:31.480 going to like start conspiracy theories about Kat Tenbar. 0.99

01:07:34.360 Actually, I'm sure people already did create conspiracy theories about you. 0.96

01:07:37.520 Oh, yeah.

01:07:37.880 tons and so yeah so what was what were like i mean what were some of the ways that people went

01:07:42.940 after you so they accused me of being in it for the money right and so what is which is like what 0.97

01:07:48.880 what do we accuse women of when we disagree with them we accuse them of being paid right i fucking

01:07:54.520 wish right that would be amazing no because like what was actually happening is people were making 0.91

01:08:03.040 hundreds of thousands upon millions of dollars supporting johnny depp right like these youtubers

01:08:08.380 they actually are making money in it for the money they actually are in it for the money and

01:08:13.580 they made so much money and that's not like there's nothing wrong with making a career no

01:08:20.280 but what they were doing was grifting right and grifting is when you make money by selling people

01:08:26.560 something that isn't real so that isn't real or that you don't actually believe yes right and like

01:08:32.380 I truly deep down believe that a lot of the content creators who made content in defense of Johnny Depp are aware that he abused Amber Heard.

01:08:41.840 Because if you actually are in it that deep, like I had to get so deep, I had to watch the trial.

01:08:46.920 But beyond just watching the trial, I was also reading hundreds of pages of court documents.

01:08:51.640 Dozens upon dozens of screenshots, text messages, audio files, video files.

01:08:56.420 Like I immersed myself into this world because I needed to know who the victim was.

01:09:02.820 Right. And like presumably all these content creators were on some level consuming, you know, that level of detail about the trial, too.

01:09:11.020 Yeah. And it's really hard to do that and not see that she was clearly a victim of abuse.

01:09:16.400 Yeah. And so there I believe that they know that she is a victim.

01:09:20.740 And I think that for some of these content creators, their motives are really clear because some of them are misogynistic men who are seeking to create a world where female victims aren't believed.

01:09:32.960 And some of the content creators are abusers themselves.

01:09:35.720 I remember you turning off your replies on Twitter, which is, you know, what it's what we do when we're getting we're getting dogpiled.

01:09:43.880 yeah i got dogpiled uh people created a petition to get me fired that has almost 2 000 signatures 0.98

01:09:50.900 oh wow and nbc was like we don't fucking care like yeah yeah i mean nbc didn't give a shit 0.97

01:09:55.860 they're just like they're so above it right like i don't think people understand that like people 0.98

01:10:00.020 genuinely think that they can get me fired and don't get me wrong kat tenbarge claims to be 0.99

01:10:05.820 invincible well let's wipe the smirk off of her face that's literally what they're gonna do but

01:10:11.400 know they've already tried so hard like so many groups of people have tried to undermine me and 0.94

01:10:16.560 it's like it's the same thing that they did to amber you know they make shit up uh there was an 0.93

01:10:22.140 instagram account with like over a million followers that posted a spam email that claimed 0.98

01:10:28.900 that i worked for amber heard oh my god and just like making shit up just making shit because when 0.97

01:10:33.600 you don't have actual ammo against people you just make shit up you just make shit up i mean i was 0.98

01:10:38.080 not creating content around this at all because i didn't really know what the fuck was going on 0.96

01:10:41.540 the only tweet and i was looking back this morning at like i was like did i talk about this at the

01:10:45.780 time i think i made maybe a tweet about the milani tiktok about how it pissed me off but like maybe

01:10:50.820 i think i deleted it because even that was like too much of um of a sin in the eyes of johnny

01:10:56.520 but the one tweet that i did still have up i i tweeted that the snl skit was inappropriate yeah

01:11:03.900 I said something to the effect of, like, regardless about how you feel, regardless of how you feel about this case, like, why are we making SNL skits about, like, a domestic abuse situation?

01:11:14.500 Were the trial still ongoing?

01:11:15.660 Yada, yada.

01:11:16.400 And, like, even that, like, people were in my replies, like, well, but Johnny Depp's a victim.

01:11:20.540 And so male victims.

01:11:21.760 And so and I'm like, but what does that have to do with an SNL skit?

01:11:24.600 Yeah.

01:11:25.920 The very first thing that I ever posted about the trial, because I kind of wanted to just step into, like, not the deep end, the shallow end.

01:11:33.000 Right, right, right.

01:11:33.900 The first thing I said was just that I was watching the trial and I was watching her witnesses and I thought that they were good.

01:11:42.600 That's all I said.

01:11:43.460 Yeah. And people were like, kill yourself. 0.97

01:11:45.020 Literally. 1.00

01:11:46.860 Kill yourself in the name of like preventing abuse. 1.00

01:11:49.680 Right. 0.99

01:11:50.240 Like, that's really what it was.

01:11:52.100 Yeah.

01:11:52.260 You know, we're talking about this a year later.

01:11:55.720 In some ways, the dust has settled, kind of.

01:11:57.980 In other ways, it hasn't.

01:11:59.660 You know, he's more popular, arguably, than he's ever been.

01:12:02.980 she's kind of in tatters and i've seen online a bit of a shift there's definitely more people now

01:12:11.540 being like i think i was wrong or i was wrong but i'm not sure how i saw a tweet the other day that

01:12:16.980 was like i feel guilty about the way that i participated in the amber herd pylon can someone

01:12:22.020 explain to me why i was wrong because i have a feeling in my gut that i was yeah and i'm starting

01:12:26.520 to see more of that which is good and it's also i mean it's what we're doing here today yeah we're

01:12:31.780 kind of looking at this for how it actually happened and not you know the mess of of trying

01:12:37.920 to to speak to it at the time which some people like rian fisher kwan and yourself did and got

01:12:43.580 you know an unimaginable amount of backlash for but the thing is like we always do this

01:12:48.900 where we look back on the way we treated you know especially women in the public eye we did this

01:12:56.420 with britney spears we did this with janet jackson and the super bowl you know tanya harding in the

01:13:02.940 90s we absolutely harass these women and then after we've harassed them and after we've transformed 0.99

01:13:09.880 their lives for the worse we look back and we go yeah that was wrong you know and and when these

01:13:17.340 comparisons are made um you know when people are like when comparisons between amber heard and like

01:13:22.920 Britney Spears for example are made their Johnny Depp supporters or people who you know don't

01:13:28.360 support Amber Heard will be like yeah well the difference is like Britney Spears was actually

01:13:32.740 a victim and also like she wasn't an abuser like Amber Heard was an abuser and so that's why all

01:13:39.380 this is justified but if you look at what people were saying about Britney Spears at the time when 0.94

01:13:43.440 the public was abusing her it was the same shit in the fact that like people made these grand 0.82

01:13:48.860 moral proclamations about like why their harassment of her was not only justified but like righteous 0.98

01:13:55.480 and so and i think a lot i think a lot i mean i think a lot about britney spears in general

01:13:59.820 i think about her just like a lot like more than i should but i think a lot about the diane sawyer

01:14:04.880 interview that she did oh yeah when the public was starting to turn on her in a really huge way

01:14:11.360 and she was like fucking like 20 years old or something but in it diane sawyer is addressing 0.55

01:14:17.000 that with her and she plays an audio recording where the wife of the former governor of maryland 0.98

01:14:23.320 says that if she could shoot britney spears she would which is such a jarring thing to hear and

01:14:29.520 you would be crazy to think that that would be included in any way other than to be like wow 0.83

01:14:34.100 isn't that crazy britney like what do you how do you feel about these people harassing you 0.97

01:14:37.700 but after the audio plays diane's britney britney goes oh wow that's horrible i can't believe she'd

01:14:43.340 say that about me. And Diane Sawyer immediately goes, because of how hard you make it to raise

01:14:47.980 kids when you're always on the TV. And you know, it's everyone's now feeling like they should

01:14:52.620 dress like you. Britney Spears has upset a lot of mothers in this country, starting with the wife 1.00

01:14:57.480 of the governor of Maryland, who appeared at an anti-violence rally. And we'll listen to what she

01:15:02.900 said. Really, if I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would. Oh, that's

01:15:09.260 horrible that's really bad because of the example for kids and how hard it is to be a parent and

01:15:14.860 keep all of this away from your kids well that's really sad that she said that ew you know what

01:15:22.780 like i'm not here to you know babysit her kids like it's immediately turned into this moral thing

01:15:31.420 of like well but you make it really hard to be a parent of children because now they want to wear

01:15:36.260 like low-waisted pants or something yeah and so no like britney sears was was not like this

01:15:43.440 perfect victim at the time yeah like because like i said like the perfect victim of abuse 0.92

01:15:47.960 and i know it's a different kind of abuse like i'm not saying that what she went through in the

01:15:51.360 public is is the same but there are parallels with amber heard and with all the other women

01:15:56.000 that we do this too where we pick a woman to hate we find a reason why it's morally justified

01:16:01.340 to to hurl any amount of abuse at her and then we do it and a bunch of years later we're like

01:16:07.580 hmm guess we were wrong and then like two weeks later we do it again and like how do we stop

01:16:14.880 ourselves that is a really good question yeah i don't know if you have the answer i think that

01:16:21.020 for me the big shift was the dephard case because i think that it made me realize the extent to

01:16:31.180 which misogyny goes unchecked and how when we confront these issues of misogyny, we still blame

01:16:37.620 women. And I think that we're even going to see that with Amber because, you know, as the backlash

01:16:43.300 to Amber was occurring, people said things like, you're making it harder for real victims.

01:16:48.580 Right. Which was another like morally superior proclamation of like, my abuse of Amber is

01:16:54.260 justified because she's making it harder for real survivors.

01:16:57.080 Yes. And what those people are doing when they say that, like that phrase in itself is the antithesis of what helps survivors, because Amber Heard is a survivor. So when you say that Amber Heard is making it harder for real survivors, anyone whose experiences align with Amber now feels like they can't consider themselves a survivor.

01:17:15.520 Anyone who ever fought back.

01:17:16.560 Yeah. And I've seen this, you know, in my work, I've seen both victims of celebrities and victims of just average, ordinary people. All of them face added stigma because of this case. And I know for a fact that there are victims of celebrities who have decided not to come forward because of what happened to Amber. They don't want to be the next Amber.

01:17:39.320 So that's a real chilling effect. And then on top of that, when you have the cultural phenomenon of the way that this case was consumed, now we have a machine that is ready to find its next target.

01:17:53.100 And so in the year following the trial, we saw this machine turn on other women and people. We saw it on TikTok, on YouTube, on social media, in real life. It's the same misogynistic pattern being applied over and over again to different situations.

01:18:09.320 Right. Which brings me to my last kind of question for you, which is, you know, a lot of people listening are probably like how I was the first time I heard about this airing, which was like, I don't really care about the court trials of rich and famous white people, which is like a very understandable thing.

01:18:27.200 And in general, I don't. And you could say, well, I'm not really a fan of Johnny Depp and I don't really care much about Amber Heard. Why should I care about any of this? Why should I care about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? This all has nothing to do with me and all of these people will be rich forever, so who cares? Why should people care? Because I think that they should.

01:18:49.340 Yeah. And this is like kind of a question that I think gets to the heart of cultural criticism and cultural reporting, which is that our pop culture informs the way we think about the world and informs the way we treat each other and it informs our opinions and our knowledge. And so most people aren't taking classes to understand domestic violence. Most people aren't reading books.

01:19:13.980 Right. They learn about domestic violence through watching a YouTube video about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.

01:19:18.380 Exactly. And so that's the real danger here is that it is a trickle down effect far beyond just Amber and Johnny. We see, you know, examples of abusive men referring to their girlfriends or their partners as Amber Heard.

01:19:32.420 Amber Heard 2.0 was trending. Right. Like almost immediately after about like some another woman.

01:19:37.660 Yes. And when we have these bad misconceptions around domestic violence, and when we have this myth of the perfect victim, which ensures that a woman will never be believed, and we combine that with the TikTok outrage machine, what we're now seeing is the Amber Heard effect not just happening to celebrities, but it's happening to regular people who have no desire to have their life blown up and commented on by millions of people.

01:20:04.460 You know, there are TikToks now of abusive men who are not famous, but they're taking the Johnny Depp playbook and they're smearing their victims online.

01:20:15.180 And we see viral outrage coalescing around people who aren't even famous.

01:20:20.000 Right. Towards people who are not Amber Heard, towards people who aren't famous, who aren't well connected with, you know, legal teams.

01:20:27.340 Yeah.

01:20:27.720 They're just people like you and I.

01:20:29.820 Yeah. And I've spoken to people where it's like they're not the victim being abused, but they are their best friend or they are their sister.

01:20:38.520 And they're like abuser has a viral TikTok or something.

01:20:41.300 Yes. And it's like coming from an outsider perspective, like I've spoken to women who defended Johnny Depp and are now seeing their own friend or sister be torn apart on the Internet by the same mob.

01:20:54.220 Hmm. And you see that and you see that realization over time that these attitudes aren't reserved for just the rich and famous. They also affect everyone. And so you could be Amber Heard. Right. Any of us could be Amber Heard. Right. Any of your loved ones could be Amber Heard.

01:21:11.520 And Amber Heard with significantly less resources to deal with the fallout.

01:21:16.660 It really is important to correct the record of how we should think about this because how a lot of people did think about this is now allowing regular women to just feel the wrath of a culture that does not accept and believe survivors of abuse.

01:21:31.980 Yeah. I feel like if I could distill one thing in the population to take away from all of this is that in an abusive relationship, there is a perpetrator and a victim. Like, regardless of whether you like either of those individuals, one of them is a victim and one of them is a perpetrator.

01:21:50.760 And you cannot like Amber Heard while still acknowledging that she's a victim.

01:21:55.880 And in fact, if you don't, if instead you retreat to this position that many people view as neutral, which is that they're both bad, that's actually not a neutral position.

01:22:05.400 That helps Johnny Depp because that's the argument that he is trying to make is like my behavior is excused because of her behavior.

01:22:12.960 Right.

01:22:13.380 And so when we view both of them as bad, we're ensuring that the cycle of abuse will be perpetuated.

01:22:19.320 And so that's what I would want people to take away from this is like, they're not both bad.

01:22:24.560 You don't have to support them.

01:22:27.040 You don't have to talk about it.

01:22:29.200 You don't have to make it a focal point of your life.

01:22:31.560 But don't look at abusive situations as like, oh, everybody involved is culpable because there always is a victim.

01:22:39.800 And the victim is Amber Heard.

01:22:41.300 And the victim is Amber Heard.

01:22:42.940 Kat, you are 25?

01:22:47.100 Yes.

01:22:47.440 And so unbelievably wise beyond your ears.

01:22:51.320 I mean, it's been such a pleasure.

01:22:53.520 Thank you for coming today.

01:22:54.720 Thank you so much for having me.

01:22:56.440 Where can people find you and support your work?

01:22:59.240 So you can follow me on Twitter.

01:23:01.180 Which I highly recommend.

01:23:03.680 I'm on Twitter and I'm now on Blue Sky at Kat Tembarge.

01:23:08.420 And you can also find my author profile link there to read my NBC News coverage.

01:23:13.600 Is Blue Sky going to succeed?

01:23:17.440 I hope so.

01:23:20.320 We don't really know.

01:23:21.940 If you enjoyed this episode, I would love if you could give it a share to a friend, your mom, your uncle who had a lot to say about Johnny Depp or someone you know with a Johnny Depp Stan account or, you know, whoever, whoever might gain something from listening to it.

01:23:37.440 I hope you enjoy it.

01:23:39.080 I hope you learn something.

01:23:39.920 I definitely did.

01:23:42.520 If you like this podcast, if you want to hear more, you can follow us on whatever app you use to get your podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever.

01:23:52.200 I'm a Spotify girl thrown through, but you know, you do you.

01:23:57.460 If you have five seconds or less, you could give us a rating that would really help us out and it takes no time at all.

01:24:04.180 If you didn't like this episode, do not give us a rating.

01:24:07.200 I would really appreciate that.

01:24:09.020 and um yeah thank you so much for listening i really really do appreciate it until next week

01:24:15.800 stay fruity

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - September 26, 2023

Amber Heard & The Myth of the Perfect Victim

Episode Stats

Transcript