‘Love’ in a time of ugly abuse
The high-speed crash called the brief marriage of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, its aftermath now on live TV, mirrors Russia’s ongoing wrecking of Ukraine, seen too on news bulletins. How like our own lives, we don’t say, as we point to the couple’s misery, the catastrophe of war being too vast to comprehend, the battles of one man versus one woman all too familiar.
A vile war – as all wars are – plays second fiddle just now to watching people who didn’t know how to live even when they had it all. And millions target the once beautiful actress as spitefully as anyone can who hides their real name and was never themselves talented or lovely to look at.
Watch and learn. If you haven’t had an alcoholic or drug addict in your life so far, time will find you one, and that’s a life-sapping misery.
A matriarchal family of teetotallers didn’t equip me for that. In my childhood home the only booze was my grandmother’s cheap bottle of sherry for Christmas trifles, and nobody swigged from it secretly.
My mother later made a foray into collecting miniature liquor bottles she displayed in a small shelf unit, convinced they’d rise in value as the liquor aged. This was on a par with my family’s innocent belief that collecting Post Office first day covers would one day make them rich.
My family didn’t have the looks or talent for the big breaks, so they clutched at meek forms of investment that would never deliver. Many years later I learned about alcoholism in the extended family. It was never spoken of openly. I also started drinking. Big regrets.
For Depp there’s no shame, only chuckles at his own alcohol and drug-infused good times. For himself he is endlessly indulgent, as addicts are, but Heard’s evidence has shown his good times in their ugly glory. We hear about the ‘‘monster’’ he calls himself when he’s out of it, as if he doesn’t get that in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde he plays the villain.
An alcoholic and his wife, not famous of course, lived near us in another state unit when I was a kid. He had Depp-style rages and beat his wife. My mother felt sorry for her, but her patience ran out as the wife returned again and again to the hell she wouldn’t leave.
There have been times when I was a version of that woman, ground down by the vicious onslaught of addict behaviour. Guys, it isn’t cute, and your parody of caring when you’re sober is a sick joke. Look at Heard, daughter of an addict who once scored drugs with Depp. You don’t get to look so overwhelmed and sad by being loved and respected.
Of the many forms of violence, the most powerful may be financial. Depp’s suing Heard is violence, the kind rich people use against the less well off. You can buy a win with good lawyers who know you can afford to pay, but you can equally lose simply because you can’t afford lawyers.
Heard’s lesser wealth is being frittered away in an unequal trial that laughs at justice.
She also behaved badly. Their marriage was a slugfest on both sides, with Heard critically observed by Depp’s employees, whose job now is to loyally back him up. She may have a drinking problem herself. If so, she has paid with the probable destruction of her lesser career, and the vengeance of a man who once professed to care for her. ‘‘Love’’ doesn’t get bleaker, or uglier, than that.