Voices: The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial has become as divisive as Brexit

“Who do you support?” a friend I haven’t seen for a while asked me on the school run. He’s American, and was asking me about the talking point of 2022: no, not the pandemic, not Partygate, but the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial, of course.

“Come on, you can’t possibly believe Amber ‘poopy’ Heard,” he added, a genuine tinge of disbelief to his voice. “She’s mad!”

And so, I found myself repeating what I’ve been saying all along, when I’ve seen the disgusting memes and reactions on social media – those directed at Heard, who by any objective estimation has been through living hell, and the comments hurled at those who have written critically of the differing treatment meted out for Johnny “roses thrown in his path, crowds waving, people taking their babies to wait outside court for him” Depp – that the world has become strangely split and divided.

Whether you’re “Team Depp” or “Team Heard” is the new “Leave” or “Remain”. And the consequences for Heard supporters – just as they were for us Remainers – are truly dire.

Our writers, many of them female, have received abhorrent and unjustified abuse on Twitter, merely for mentioning Depp’s name in anything less than glowing terms. As a result of this article, I fully expect the same. Follow the responses once this is tweeted out if you don’t believe me – note how quickly they become personal. Ask yourselves why we might have turned the comments off.

There’s just something about the Depp v Heard defamation trial – yes, the one in the US that he recently won and she lost, though that wasn’t the case in the UK in 2020, when Depp lost his claim of libel against The Sun for calling him “a wife-beater” (Judge Mr Justice Nicol in the High Court found what the newspaper had printed about him assaulting Heard to be “substantially true”, and said 12 of the 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence had indeed occurred) – that brings out the very worst in people.

It’s a bit like a wedding, or Christmas, but then, you almost expect someone’s nose to get out of joint if they’re not asked to be a bridesmaid, or find themselves left with nothing but a pair of socks beneath the tree. You may well dread those kinds of festivities for the same reasons as I do – because they all too often descend into a gladiatorial arena of awkwardly combative political ideals; where you find yourself sitting at the dinner table next to “casually racist” Auntie Eileen, pro-Brexit Uncle Dave, or “anti-vaxxer” Cousin Caroline.

Never has my spine tingled with more trepidation than when being introduced by a relative to someone at a party as, “this is Victoria... she’s very PC.” Nowadays, of course, they’d say “woke” or “snowflake”. The meaning is still the same, and still intended as an insult – though in my book it’s a compliment.

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So too, then, has the Depp v Heard trial become subject non grata; a product of the entirely-manufactured, so-called “culture wars” played out most often on the battlefield of social media. Talking to someone who is proudly and vociferously Team Depp is, to me, as offputting as being trapped in conversation with someone who votes Tory or supported the campaign to leave the EU; who insists that Boris Johnson “got Brexit done”, even when the truth is as glaring as the rows of empty produce in the supermarket.

I was once sat next to someone who worked in border control at the Home Office at a friend’s wedding – emphasis on the “control”. The conversation didn’t go well, especially after a few wines.

Depp v Heard has become a similar social touchstone, a way of judging whether the person you are talking to is like you or not like you. A way of finding out, basically – and bluntly – whether you’ll get on. Whether you have the same ideals, the same beliefs, the same distaste for misogynistic mockery, the same concern for women and for all victims of violence. As we wrote much earlier on in the trial, before the verdict – which side you fall on says an awful lot about you.

Sartre may have written the words “hell is other people” in his play, No Exit, but he missed off the ending: “Hell is other people who want to tell you why you’re wrong about Amber Heard.”