My Opinion Doesn’t Count?
By: Natasha Ahmed
Tags: Public Power, Hollywood, Johnny Depp, Entertainment, Amber Heard

It’s become too easy to denigrate the opposition nowadays. You stand back and affect a sneer, and then dismiss them as irrelevant because they are romantic, middle-aged, women, on Twitter or TikTok, own cats, own lizards, are liberal, conservative, right-wing, left-wing, too young, too old, too idealistic, too cynical…the list is endless.

Under normal circumstances, this dismissive attitude flutters about social media platforms. It’s a political tactic, and freely used as a way to negate public support for a party, an issue, an ideology, or just an opinion. Rather than evaluate the reasons behind an opinion, you tack on a couple of unflattering names to the opinion-holder, and effectively deflect from the opinion itself. There’s no quicker way to derail a discussion.

Perhaps this has been a conscious tactic on the part of the media hype surrounding Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in the last year. It’s been effective.

Support for Johnny Depp, according to Heard and her cohorts, has come from Russian bots, or obsessed fans on Twitter, neither of which merit a second glance. The media, especially, would like you to think the support is either artificially inflated, or coming from obsessed, misguided, uninformed, or blinded-by-his-looks sheep.

So, first of all, let’s understand that no amount of money can buy the kind of support Mr Depp is getting across ALL social media platforms — from the seven and half million followers on Facebook (which he joined in April 2020. He’s averaging a million new followers a month) and the nine million on Instagram (joined at the same time as Facebook), to the trending hashtags and ever-growing content on TikTok (where #JusticeForJohnnyDepp has a whopping 185 million views), Twitter, YouTube (several YouTubers with followers numbering in the millions have been regularly updating the public on the facts of this case, each time, their views hitting six-figures), Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, and possibly a few platforms I’ve never heard of. In contrast, Amber Heard’s support has been shrinking, as has her social media following (she’s been losing followers steadily on Instagram). Mr Depp has lost his massive fortune, according to the scathingly one-sided articles I’ve read about this case so far, so who’s funding these Russian bots?

I understand that Heard has filed a suit against Mr Depp claiming that he’s conducting a smear campaign against her using bots and social media, so this is an essential narrative for her and her attorneys. It’s important to recognise that that is all it is, however — a narrative with no basis in truth. Mr Depp has been one of the biggest international (Mr Depp commands massive crowds across the globe, not just in Europe or the USA) stars of the last two decades, and it’s not unreasonable to suppose he would have this kind of following.

As a newcomer to social media, and as a notoriously private star, none of the content that’s come from him has been gone beyond the promotion of his personal projects. There is certainly nothing from Mr Depp himself that would suggest he’s been egging his supporters on to smear Heard. As bitter a pill as that may seem to Heard’s camp, the support is real and comes from people, not from bots.

“If They’re Not Bots, They’re Not Relevant Either”

Johnny Depp as Grindelwald by Gage Skidmore: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The narrative that Mr Depp’s fandom (Deppheads, I believe) are obsessed with him because he’s beautiful has some merit. He’s an incredibly attractive and charismatic man, even as he comes up to his sixth decade. Yet, of all of Hollywood’s biggest A-List stars, he’s the only one who has never cultivated the image of a heartthrob. In fact, he’s gone out of his way to play roles where his looks become all but irrelevant. He’s painted himself, put on wigs and prosthetics and masks, shaved his head, coloured his hair, dressed up and dressed down. He’s played characters that you should, on principle, dislike, from cowards to libertines. He’s taken on roles that most of the current (and past) leading men would balk at in case it interfere with their blue-eyed sexiness.

Because of this, he has fans that include children who love Jack Sparrow and Grindelwald, ordinary adults impressed by his J. M. Barrie, off-beat people of all ages who identify with Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka, the Mad Hatter (one of my favourites), William Blake and over fifty other myriad characters he’s brought to life over thirty years. There are screaming fangirls in the mix, of course, but they’re just a fraction of his base.

It’s important to understand this about the people that support him. They’re diverse, they’re of all ages, of all races, countries, and religions (I’m a Muslim and I’ve been enjoying his movies since the nineties), and from all backgrounds. Perhaps the only type of fan he doesn’t have are fans of action stars — from what I can tell, not a jock in sight.

These are the people who are standing up for him now.

I wonder, how does being middle-aged make you irrelevant? How does being any age, in fact, make you irrelevant? Perhaps this is not a topic to discuss with children, but anyone who can read and assess information has the right to an opinion. His fans are eighteen, they’re thirty, they’re fifty, they’re eighty years old.

This is the fanbase that Heard wants us to believe are immaterial, whose opinion doesn’t count. These are the people whom she and her followers dismiss with contempt, as if admiring an actor makes you less rational, logical, or capable of using your own intellect. What she, and with her, the mainstream media that refuses to accept that someone who’s been negatively branded by them could possibly continue to command the support of the public (which would mean, of course, that the influence they imagine they carry with the public is either waning or has waned already), fail to realise is that those standing behind Mr Depp are both intelligent and from further afield of his base. They are the public.

They’re Not ALL Fans

The leaked evidence surrounding this case and the transcripts of the libel trial against The Sun are available online for anyone to peruse. I did (it’s a rabbit hole, I know, but I’ve gone down it already and it’s too late to come back), and from being completely disinterested in the case, I’ve suddenly developed a deep and lasting dislike for Heard and the so-called feminists who’ve spread their skirts around her.

It’s a sentiment shared by many others, most especially, by other survivors of domestic violence, both male and female. For those not cognisant of the facts of the case, this may be surprising. She’s the one, after all, who’s been held up as a victim. So why are are so many survivors supporting Mr Depp? Perhaps because, despite the outcome of Mr Depp’s case against The Sun, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of Mr Depp’s narrative.

This sentiment is also shared by men who have found themselves similarly unjustly accused of violence on women and have neither the resources available to Mr Depp nor the stamina to fight back.

It’s shared by women who recognise that Heard has hi-jacked the #MeToo movement for her own purposes, weakening its efficacy and validity.

It’s shared by men and women of all ages who have never seen a Johnny Depp movie, or heard his music, but to whom justice has been elusive in their lives.

None of these people are irrelevant, and their support of Mr Depp is not, as some would like to believe, inconsequential.

It has far-reaching ramifications for the #MeToo movement, which its administrators are desperately trying to preserve and failing to do so. They would be better off evaluating the truth now before this gets any bigger or is overtaken by a #MenToo movement, because Mr Depp’s support is growing, not diminishing.

It has ramifications for the relevance of giant media houses pushing an agenda. If well-placed, well-written articles in credible publications cannot sway public opinion any more, then why are they there except as advertising warehouses?

It has ramifications for Hollywood, which seems to be disintegrating in well-paced intervals. If beloved million-dollar franchises hold less sway with the public than the actors, then how much power do studios actually have?

Perhaps most people in Hollywood and the media are holding their breath, waiting for Mr Depp’s Virginia case to unfold before taking a side. It seems unlikely — given the loss of his WB and Disney contracts, the complete silence in the face of unsubstantiated allegations, the statements of unnamed studio executives in various articles detailing the demise of Mr Depp’s career, they’ve already taken a stand. The only thing this has done, however, is galvanise the public even further.

What remains to be seen is how far and for how long they will continue to underestimate the public whose opinion, it seems, “doesn’t count”.