"He has a photo of his late friend Hunter S Thompson and a doll of Donald Trump climbing into a cage with the American flag inside it — the 'horrible cage,' he explains of the US presidency."

"On the coffee table I spot a magnifying glass, a book on Jack the Ripper and an ashtray with 'Hello C***y' written on it. This rented house is where Depp had been living for months but he knows that he has to move. Somebody of his infamy simply cannot live near Carnaby Street without getting stuck indoors. 'I can be isolated and happier than a clam,' he explains. 'But I don’t get out much. I’m stuck with my thoughts; just thinking, writing or watching weird shit on YouTube. It can’t be healthy... But there is never any way to hide, and I just feel uncomfortable causing this weird form of attention I do, because I’m really shy.' How is that compatible with his career? 'Well, fame is the last thing I ever chased...'... Does he miss having the children about? 'Oh man, my kids growing up in the south of France in their youth?... I was Papa. I cannot tell you how much I loved being Papa.... Then, suddenly, Papa was out the window. I was Dad. But Papa was awesome and I’m getting old enough for Papa to possibly come back. Some motherf***er’s going to have to call me Papa!'"

From "Johnny Depp: ‘I was a crash test dummy for MeToo’/Over a rambling four-hour session with Jonathan Dean, the actor opens up about the Amber Heard trials, his painful childhood, 40 years of fame and the friends who turned their backs on him" (London Times)

This morning on Twitter, Alice Cooper is trending....

Alice Cooper is trending…. So here is Alice, me and Groucho Marx.#AliceCooper pic.twitter.com/BM8iEfvNTu

— Micky Dolenz (@TheMickyDolenz1) June 13, 2023

ADDED: I think Alice Cooper is trending because "Johnny Depp was mobbed by fans as he and Alice Cooper stepped out in Istanbul, Turkey ahead of their gig with their band Hollywood Vampires as part of their live tour on Monday" (Daily Mail).

"A perfumier designed the aroma to contain hints of 'pus, blood, faecal matter and sweat' so [Jude] Law could imagine himself as [Henry VIII]...."

"At the start of filming Law said he made sure 'very subtly' to use a dab or two of the stomach-turning scent. However, when he found that the smell aided his performance, 'it became a spray-fest.' "When Jude walked in on set,” the director, Karim Aïnouz, said, 'it was just horrible.' [Alicia] Vikander, who performed sex scenes with Law, gave a look of disgust as the actor [said] 'Even the camera operators were gagging. My memory is that we were laughing a lot.... [I'd] read several interesting accounts that you could smell Henry three rooms away. His leg was rotting so badly. He hid it with rose oil. I thought it would have a great impact if I smelt awful.'"

From "Jude Law has more than a whiff of Henry VIII in Firebrand/The film received an eight-minute standing ovation after its premiere at the Cannes film festival on Sunday" (London Times).

Watch Ms. Vikander approach the putrid actor:

I asked ChatGPT, "Can you tell me about other actors who have used smelliness to enhance their performance?" In classic ChatGPT form, I got a list of 5 items:

"He talks a bit about famous customers he’s served, including Patti Smith, who shares his fondness for Robert Louis Stevenson’s essays."

"Philip Larkin would come in, looking for first editions of his own books. He sold a copy of 'Finnegans Wake' to Johnny Depp, who was 'trying incredibly hard not to be recognized and with predictably comic results.'"

From "Love the Smell of Old Books? This Bookseller Would Like You to Leave./In his grouchy, funny memoir, 'A Factotum in the Book Trade,' Marius Kociejowski writes about what a good bookstore should feel like, famous customers he’s served and more" (NYT).

The review is by Dwight Garner — note: "garner" is fine as a name! — and the reason Kociejowski would like you to leave — if you walk into his store and say "I love the smell of old books" — is that a thousand people have walked into the store and said the same damned thing.

The Robert Louis Stevenson essays Patti Smith might have bought is "An Apology for Idlers," which I've blogged about many times, including:

2 images of male beauty — side by side this morning on the front page of the New York Times.

I found this juxtaposition entrancing:

  

We see the idealized domesticated males, together, with idealized dog, on a park bench, looking simply and virtuously for a modest home. And we see the ominous male, heterosexual, standing in the dark next to an empty space where there once was a woman. Somehow his very looks have brought on madness! He — standing alone — is proof of the causal connection between male beauty and madness.

 

I've read both articles, but let's take a closer at the one about Johnny Depp, which is titled, when you click in "Johnny Depp Through the Looking Glass/Examining the madness that male beauty elicits." This is an opinion piece by Rhonda Garelick, School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons/The New School:

I've got 10 TikTok selections for you today. Let me know what you liked best.

1. They ruined "Satisfaction."

2. When Johnny Depp impersonated Donald Trump.

3. Reviewing Grandma Sue's pear salad.

4. "Walk That Lonesome Valley."

5. The Queen turns on the lights.

6. "You just have to have the courage of your convictions."

7. The lemon used to douse the shrimp....

8. If European-Americans experienced microaggressions. 

9. The Italian husband thinks his wife must be tricking him about the meaning of "peacock."

10. People who think hating small talk is a personality.

"I tried to visit Eve’s tomb once in Saudi Arabia."

"For some Muslims, tradition holds that the grave site of the woman who is the biblical Eve is in the Red Sea city of Jeddah (the Arabic word for 'grandmother'). The cemetery’s caretaker said no women were allowed in.... The [Depp/Heard] trial resonated because it was a primary story. We find depictions of vertiginous falls compelling. It is human nature to be fascinated by stories that echo how our nature became human, in darker respects, once Adam and Eve were demoted to mere mortals. According to the Book of Genesis and 'Paradise Lost,' the sort of behavior described in the sordid defamation trial — jealousy, violence, excess, overindulgence — came as a result of Eve giving in to Satan and Adam giving in to Eve.... And what could be more Edenic than Depp’s $100-million property portfolio...?"

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Johnny and Amber: Trouble in Paradise" (NYT).

Dowd is distancing herself from the sordid detail of Depp's proving he'd been defamed. Let's back way the hell off and see only the vague outlines of the timeless myth of Man and Woman.

But who knew they had Eve's tomb somewhere?

After the Depp/Heard verdict, let's talk about the role played by the ACLU.

There's this column, from Erik Wemple — "Depp-Heard case hinged on the world’s worst #MeToo op-ed." Wemple's column, like the "world's worst #MeToo op-ed," was published in the Washington Post:

The first draft came off the keyboards of the ACLU, via consultation with Heard. Four lawyers at the ACLU reviewed it to ensure that it aligned with the organization’s policy positions. Heard’s lawyers separately scrubbed it for compliance with a nondisclosure provision of her divorce settlement, according to an ACLU spokesperson. 

"There is, so far, only one proven fact in digital publishing: The more you publish the more successful you are...."

"The most effective of the influencers turned commentators, like @houseinhabit’s Jessica Reed Kraus, know this. Kraus is a San Clemente, California, mother who got her start in the content mines as a lifestyle blogger (picture lots of wavy-haired sons, surfboards, pools, and exposed ceiling beams). Over the past year or so, she morphed into a trial-obsessed Instagrammer.

"I want to scream. I want to vomit. I want tear down every courthouse brick by brick because there is no justice to be had in our system of laws."

Said a woman — identified only as "Meghan" — who had experienced "physical and emotional abuse" during her marriage.

Quoted in "'Men Always Win’: Survivors ‘Sickened’ by the Amber Heard Verdict/It didn’t matter what the verdict was — as one domestic violence survivor puts it, 'this case is my worst fear playing out on a public stage'" (Rolling Stone).

This morning, I'm brushing off the many knee-jerk reactions to the Depp/Heard verdict — low-quality ravings about how women in general will suffer because this one woman wasn't believed. (It seems to me, the greater cause is the truth, and we can very coherently side with real victims and oppose phony victims. This was a case of catching a liar in action.)

But this quote struck me as different and bloggable because it speaks of destroying the buildings that house the governmental entities that are functioning in a way that you believe falls below proper standards: I want tear down every courthouse brick by brick because there is no justice to be had in our system of laws. 

It made me think of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building. Put to the side whether you agree that the 2020 election was rigged or that Amber Heard didn't get justice. The question is, if you do think something like that, should your reaction be to attack the building?

"Verdict: Johnny Depp wins defamation case against Amber Heard."

The NY Post reports.

"You might expect a defamation trial pitting one movie star against another to unleash a fire hose of debased memes in both directions..."

"... but that’s not what’s happening here. The online commentary about the trial quickly advanced from a he-said she-said drama script to an internet-wide smear campaign against Heard.... Seemingly harmless YouTube channels and TikTok accounts dedicated to legal commentary or body-language analysis have pivoted to pro-Depp content en masse.... The pool camera system, which is operated by Court TV, films the proceedings from multiple angles... The sheer amount of material recorded each day enables viewers to examine every inch of the courtroom with a conspiratorial zeal, as empty gestures and meaningless asides are whipped into dubious case clues, spliced into humiliating Heard reaction GIFs or leveraged to build a charmingly unbothered bad-boy court presence for Depp.... [M]any TikToks are soundtracked with the circuslike theme from 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' trapping Heard in the role of sad clown... [L]ike Gamergate, which took an obscure gaming-community controversy and inflated it into an internet-wide anti-feminist harassment campaign and a broader right-wing movement, this nihilistic circus is a potentially radicalizing event. When the trial ends this week, the elaborate grassroots campaign to smear a woman will remain, now with a plugged-in support base and a field-tested harassment playbook...."

Writes Amanda Hess in "TikTok’s Amber Heard Hate Machine/Television turned the celebrity trial into a 24-hour tabloid spectacle. Social media made it into a sport" (NYT).

I've got 7 little TikToks for you today. Enjoy! And tell me what you liked best.

1. Thought it was a clown, but it was just a guy.

2. Making friends as an adult.

3. Box hair.

4. "Oh, madam, I will tie your garter..."

5. Johnny Depp — Day 1 versus Day 20.

6. An elegant 150-year-old puzzle.

7. "Que Sera, Sera."

"Depp fans resemble Trump fans in their blind loyalty and willingness to set aside ugly facts about their hero..."

"Like Trump fans, Depp fans act like they’re in a cult. They call Heard’s claims of domestic violence a hoax and cheer on Depp lawyer Camille Vasquez, in a sort of online Roman coliseum, whenever she asks a tough question of Heard.... Whatever the jury decides, a man who was once the King of Cool now seems like a washed-up, abrasive shell of his former self.... And Depp stans at the courthouse will hear no evil about Captain Jack Sparrow. All across the world, customized facts are the rage. Truth has left the building."

Writes Maureen Dowd in "Johnny Depp and Other Pirates" (NYT).

I bet Trump loves this column: If Depp is like him, then he is like Depp. When people love you, they are loyal.

But, Dowd asks, what about Truth? Isn't it terrible that people aren't loyal to Truth?

I would ask: How do you know that your loyalty is to Truth and the other side's loyalty is a cult?

"Whatever you think of Ms. Heard’s actions, or whether you choose to believe her, this is a good old-fashioned public pillorying — only memes have replaced the stones...."

"[T]his trial could function as a case study in contrived stereotypes used to discredit women, even if you believe there is some truth behind Mr. Depp’s claims. Ms. Heard has been portrayed as mentally unstable, hysterical, a gold digger, a temptress who brought home other paramours at all hours of the night, a freeloader who moved her friends into Mr. Depp’s many houses, an attention-seeker with an unquenchable need for drama and of course an untrustworthy liar — textbook undermining strategies, each with its own sexist implications.... Whether you believe Ms. Heard or not, watching a woman excoriated in public has been popular entertainment since the Middle Ages. Somehow, Ms. Heard seems to have become a stand-in for every evil, lying woman getting her comeuppance — alpha queen bees in high school, the girl who slept with your boyfriend or girlfriend, every manipulative ex. She is Eve, she is Medusa, she is Lady Macbeth. She evokes vamps and vampires, wicked stepmothers, witches.... This trial seems to have exposed some of the rhetorical weaknesses of #MeToo. 'Believe women'... had somehow morphed into 'believe all women'... The intent of that early slogan was, in part, to encourage the public to treat women who speak up with basic dignity and respect, however messy and imperfect they or their stories may be...."

Writes Jessica Bennett, in "The Humiliation of Amber Heard Is Both Modern and Medieval" (NYT).

"If Depp somehow prevails, one can expect similar lawsuits against other women who say they’ve survived abuse."

"Already, the singer Marilyn Manson has filed a defamation suit against his ex-fiancée Evan Rachel Wood, one of several women who have accused him of sexual violence. But Depp needn’t succeed in court to achieve his ends. In a 2016 email to his former agent, Christian Carino, Depp wrote that Heard was 'begging for total global humiliation.' Now this televised trial has resulted in an explosion of hatred and derision directed at her. The volatile actress — who at times was violent toward Depp, and who never made good on a promise to donate her entire divorce settlement to charity — is very far from a perfect victim. That made her the perfect object of a #MeToo backlash. Online, there’s a level of industrial-scale bullying directed at Heard that puts all previous social media pile-ons to shame.... Meanwhile, every platform appears to be full of adoring pro-Depp memes.... [T]here’s a history of online communities fixating 'on theories that the male objects of their fandom were being manipulated and tortured by less-famous, female romantic partners.' There seems, however, to be a broader misogynist frenzy at work, one characteristic of the deeply reactionary moment we’re living through."

From "Amber Heard and the Death of #MeToo" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT).

"[T]o counteract preconceptions of the star players as squabbling hysterical celebrities with skewed value systems and distorted morals..."

"... they had to don the camouflage of trust. The clothes we subliminally associate with adulthood, responsibility and reliability. In a word: suits.... In the end, this is partly a trial of image, and of how things appear on the outside versus what happens behind closed doors. Of natural prejudices — about celebrity and what it represents, of privilege, of gender roles — and the way such preconceptions can be altered via appearance and affect. Was Ms. Heard playing a role, as Mr. Depp’s lawyers suggested? Of course. So was Mr. Depp. (So were their lawyers.) Not just because they are professional actors, but because that is what testimony demands: a convincing portrayal of honesty, of believability, using all the tools available to create character. In every meaning of that word."

From "In Court, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard Dress to Suggest/Honesty, respectability, sincerity — the clothes make the argument" by Vanessa Friedman (NYT).

Why are we hearing this?

Here's a featured snippet of the long-running Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial. This is Heard on cross-examination, as she's made to listen to extensive audio of a fight the married couple had at some point in the past:

 

I can't take the time to watch the whole trial, but I am noticing things, especially the way social media is siding, apparently massively, with Depp. There's so much contempt for Heard that I'm inclined to construe things in her favor just to be fair. In the clip above, we're hearing 2 actors, doing who knows what to each other. Why does this ultra-private interaction exist in recorded form?

I looked up the answer. I found this Mirror article from 2 years ago (when Depp was losing a defamation lawsuit against The Sun): "Johnny Depp... told the court he frequently recorded conversations with Heard to remind her what had been said." That doesn't say whether she knew or whether the recordings were ever used in a constructive way.

I see that at The Spectator, Eleanor Harmsworth is speculating that the entire trial is Depp and Heard engaged in sexual role play:

"I'm watching this trial. It's a cautionary tale. It's a cautionary tale about believing in bullshit. Like: forming a narrative in your head, like: We're rebels together!"

 

ADDED: A similar, but different analysis:

Here is my new selection of TikTok videos — 8, this time — hand-selected by me, with my preferences, which are mostly, but not entirely, for delight.

1. Kiss the hand.

2. Bear on a wire.

3. Approximating the English expression "skyscraper." 

4. The cat plays rhythm.

5. Did he call her fat?

6. Impression of a decomposing fox.

7. A gentle Alzheimer's patient shows great interest in meeting her daughter's mother.

8. A memorial to the smoke the rose within Grand Central Station over the years.