The Media Persona of Amber Heard
Are there any photo she looks normal?
Johny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial photos, videos, memes, reels floating around the internet. A calm, reasonable, put-it-together, attractive Johny Depp, and on the other side, a liar, manipulated, over the top, 'ugly' Amber Heard. Black and white. No in-between.
Lots of people already talk about the trial as #MeToo backlash in-depth, (want to mention Jessica Bennett's Why We Love to Watch a Woman Brought Low in The New York Times and Emily Keegin's reflection on today's backlash in comparison with 90s feminist backlash on her Instagram story) so let's see how photos show us who is Amber Heard.
Steve Helber for AFP(pool photo) (2022)
Brendan Smialowski for AP (2022)
Steve Helber for AFP(pool photo) (2022)
Kevin Dietsch for Getty Images (2022)
Jim Lo Scalz for Reuters(pool photo) (2022)
Jim Lo Scalz for Reuters(pool photo) (2022)
Jim Lo Scalz for Reuters(pool photo) (2022)
unknown photographer (2022)
Elizabeth Frantz(pool photo) (2022)
Michael Raynolds for AFP(pool photo) (2022)
Screen shot from broadcast video by Distractify (2022)
Steve Helber for AFP(pool photo) (2022)
The photos show her when she looks 'fake crying', when her face's grumpy, or a second when she smirks. She looks like she yelling. She looks like she look down at something. She looks no emotion. She looks too much emotion. Even not knowing just a single detail from the trial, anyone can assume she's a bad witch in this 'storytelling'. The surreal of Amber Heard's portrays at the trial made her gradually become evilish-funny character who society can feel comfortable pitchforking her with memes and lighting her up with reels. Photos and videos set to be a internet-solid evidence of body language and expression analysis by internet-professional ("So scripted" "Fake emotion" "She looks just like my abusive ex-girlfriend"). Those presumption becomes internet-true.
Let's stamp this by seeing how cartoonish media collage Amber Heard beside Johnny Depp.
The Things
Entertainment Weekly
Sunshine News
Insider
The Independent
Page Six
Amber Heard along with this year's Hollywood obsession with women committing fraud who took advantage of #MeToo movement like Anna Delvay's Inventing Anna or Elizabeth Holmes's The Dropout and vintage woman not-intended-to-but-is scammer like Tammy Faye in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The woman portrays in society's turn from empowering and survivor in the late 10' to the scammer and liar. Just in the blink of an eye. Which Amber Heard's turn table is an obvious example of it.
But actually, looking back I see that there's always backlash on feminism. Almost like a law of a universe. Sad as it sounds.
In 1890 before the term 'feminist' was invented, the term New Woman start as a concept of a woman who aspire to go everywhere she want without a companion, want a pursue a professional career, want to wear what they feel right, to smoke and to drink as she will. More women follow that concept by times and the mainstream media joke about it. They even joke about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in the cartoon, portraying her un-wife, un-mother, un-woman.
Charles Keene for Punch Magazine (1900s)
Making fun of woman dentist. Punch Magazine (1907)
We fast forward to 1990, the era when women was said to be 'equal to men' and 'largely been won'. The progress (when we look at claimed words) or even pseudo-progress (when we look at a percentage) was from the shoulder of 70s and 80s feminist movement. 90s Woman was more free but the media raise issue that successful life for women is a mistake. Free women portray to be unhealthy and unhappy. (read: Susan Faludi's Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Woman)
Time cover (1989)
Now, by the society, woman are warned to be the unethical. Sang the chorus by Hollywood. Echo by TikTok and Instagram. The backlash is modernised into internet culture. Spread fast and worldwide.
The other way round, I can't think of a male bad-guy figure becoming this Amber Heard phenomenon. Society hates them, trials them, exiles them, and wishes to not see them again. Whether believe Amber Heard or not, for some ridiculous reason - maybe because of this absurd half-million view broadcast trial, maybe Amber Heard is not 'likable' for society in the first place, maybe society glee to marching bad-habit women down the town square, or maybe all of them together sum up to be; thousands of Amber Heard photos become witch-hunting festival.
