This is the new episode of a soap opera as redundant as it is painful. A star is splashed by allegations of misconduct of all kinds (in this regard, as we have seen, the powerful compete in creativity). She lays low for a while and then suddenly an opportunity presents itself, and it’s back through the front door.
This time, it’s actor Johnny Depp who parades on the Croisette, when the film was presented at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival Jeanne du Barryby director Maïwenn Le Besco, in which he plays King Louis XV (it can’t be invented).
Depp had been more discreet for some time. Just a year ago, the actor made headlines due to a high-profile libel lawsuit against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard. It was Depp himself who, angered that his ex-wife presented herself as a survivor of domestic violence in an open letter published in the washington postin 2018, brought this lawsuit.
The trial held in Virginia had given rise to a staggering surge of misogyny. For weeks, Amber Heard has been portrayed in media around the world as a manipulator, a liar, an abuser herself; a witch, it was suggested in barely covered words.
I remember the eagerness with which the vast majority of the public jumped on this bandwagon, unflinchingly endorsing all the stereotypes that serve to humiliate and silence survivors of domestic violence. The construction of a symmetry in the violence, the presumption of dishonesty applied to the woman who testifies, everything was there. Worst case scenario, Heard was pilloried. At best, it has been said that this whole affair was only the story, spread out in broad daylight, of a relationship that went wrong.
The court, remember, had finally recognized that the ex-spouses had mutually defamed each other, still condemning Heard to pay higher damages. Last December, the case was finally settled in an amicable agreement, while Heard declared that he did not have the strength to appeal the decision; not have the strength to face another wave of harassment.
If passions were unleashed without restraint on Amber Heard last summer, the whole world seems to have quickly forgotten the nature of the facts presented in court. The Heard trial against Depp brought to light words and gestures of incredible violence perpetrated by the actor. An English court also concluded, in 2020, in another defamation suit brought by Depp against his ex-wife, that the facts alleged by her in the English press – reiterated during the trial in the United States – were for essentially truthful.
This is undoubtedly what explains why the tension surrounding the return to the big stage of Johnny Depp, in Cannes, was palpable. But the tension seemed to arise from the fear of spoilsports more than from the merits of the case.
It must be said that the opening of the festival was marked by the sensational exit of actress Adèle Haenel, who announced that she was leaving French cinema for good, to “denounce the generalized complacency of the profession vis-à-vis sexual aggressors and more generally the way in which this milieu collaborates with the deadly racist ecocidal order of the world as it is”. His gesture was supported by a hundred actresses and actors who, in a letter published in Releasedenounce impunity in the face of violence and abuse of all kinds in the film industry.
One would have thought that by dint of protest, of declarations, of strong and courageous standpoints, the lines would have moved. That all this would have aroused at least one scruple. It is however quite the opposite: one reacts from now on to the dispute only to claim that the order of the things would have been reversed.
It’s like a sordid joke. They say yes, yes, it’s good to try to clean up environments rotten by violence, but these stories of denunciation, of banishment have gone too far. It’s a new puritanism, we can no longer say anything, do anything, etc. We know the song. The conversation is caned in advance, we repeat, each time, the choreography of the return to the status quo.
We also repeat the same “debates”, for form: should we “rehabilitate”, do we have the right to continue to celebrate among ourselves? As if the orgy of convenience had been even minimally interrupted. It is the tour de force of backlash post-#MeToo: making us believe that something has changed, that in this brief interstice between the fall of 2017 and today, a balance of power has changed, to the point where we now need to find a certain balance. But where, I wonder, did this reversal actually happen?
The appearance at Cannes of Johnny Depp is the embodiment of this. The actor and his film are leading the way. There has been talk of a “malaise” for the form, but he did not hesitate to appear, to parade in the spotlight, and this, a few days after renewing a 20 million dollar advertising partnership with the Dior brand. . There were even media outlets hastily reporting that Depp, after all, had been “cleared” by the courts — a shortcut that says a lot about where public opinion is on these issues. The message could not be clearer.
How far, therefore, will it be necessary to have neutralized the dispute so that we stop crying persecution? The program is becoming increasingly clear: the government will spare no effort to regain its rights.
Columnist specializing in environmental justice issues, Aurélie Lanctôt is a doctoral candidate in law at McGill University.