What is up with all the brigading for a second-rate actor?
Johnny Depp is on trial - at least a civil trial - over whether he is a wife-beater or his wife is a husband-beater.
Yawn! Who the fuck cares?
Well, if you read social media, you'd think a legion of people think this is an outrage, that Johnny Depp is innocent and a great guy and his career was "ruined" because of his wife's accusations. Oh, and the things they say about his wife would make a sailor blush.
Here's the deal: Johnny Depp was a teen hearthrob in Edward Scissorhands and did a decent job acting in a number of movies. But let's face it, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise was just a tent-pole summer blockbuster series with no discernible plot or real acting. It was all CGI and explosions - an explosion movie - the junk food of Hollywood. Sells well to the teens and the overseas market.
But Depp has aged and apparently spent a lot of time at the buffet. Acting, like music, is a young man's game. If you think about all the great crooners of the 40's and the rock stars of the 50's and beyond, many became famous in their teens and saw their careers end in their 20's and 30's. The same is true today with actors - people want to see young, attractive people on-screen. If you are young and good-looking, well, it doesn't matter if you can't really act.
If you can act, well, your career can go on forever. Actors like Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep, for example, keep getting roles because they are great actors. But even then, they are not being tapped for next summer's "tent pole" action explosion movie based on a comic book - unless they want to play the evil villain (who are always old).
Depp is no Meryl Streep.
Depp has simply aged-out of the genre and he doesn't have the acting chops to do serious films. He claims he would turn down $300 Million from Disney if they offered him to do a "Pirates 6" (Really? there were five of those turds?) but Disney has other things on its plate, and franchises don't go on forever. What teens are going to see a geriatric puffy-faced ballooning Depp play young? It just gets embarrassing.
So it comes as a surprise that people online are rallying behind him and dominating some social media sites such as Reddit, with supportive comments and about the worse things you can say about a person, about his wife. The whole thing smells like gamer-gate.
I don't give a shit about Depp one way or the other - just pointing out that his career has ended due to organic reasons, not because his wife wrote an op-ed piece about him. But what is interesting is that wave upon wave of people - mostly men - are brigading social media in an outpouring of support for Depp.
Or are they? A flyer found on a windshield of a car at the courthouse (I saw this online briefly, but it was downvoted to oblivion - if you have a copy, please let me know) claims that people are "brigading" - posting numerous messages under fake names - to make it seem that Depp has deep support. Indeed, countries (notably Russia), corporations, and celebrities do pay people - companies, actually - to groom their image on the Internet. It isn't hard to create a tidal wave of "opinion" online by simply flooding every forum with postings and comments supporting a particular position, person, company, or country. The implication in the flyer is that Depp has hired such a company to create an astro-turf movement and make himself look better. This may win in the court of public opinion, but isn't likely to sway jurors, who by law, are not allowed to read online postings during the trial.
I noted before that libel suits are a dangerous weapon that often backfires. Oscar Wilde tried to sue the Marquis of Queensbury for calling him a "Sodomite." Not only did Wilde lose the case, he ended up being criminally prosecuted for sodomy and sentenced to hard labor. Ahhh.. the British! Their homophobic laws live on in every former colony of theirs - in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean! Thanks Brits! Keep up the good work, civilizing the planet! Maybe Brexit was a good idea - go home and stew in your own juices for a while - leave the rest of the world in peace. I mean, the UK has done enough damage already. Now it's our turn!
Depp tried to sue his ex-wife in British Courts and lost. That's the problem with libel trials - they end up not working out the way you wanted to. Not only did he fail to prove his case, the judge went out of his way to call Depp a wife-beater. So you'd think he'd learn from that experience and move on.
Win or lose this trial, odds are he won't gain much from it. Even if he won, I doubt a jury is going to agree he lost much money in the deal, as he testified he would turn down $300 Million from Disney just out of spite. That's not damages - that's self-inflicted damage. And given all the salacious details of his life being aired, I doubt many studios would sign him on to a movie, in addition to the puffy-faced, overweight old-man problem he has. He just looks like shit. From pretty-boy to My 600-pound life, in a matter of years.
So what's the point of suing? What's the point of paying for Johnny-Bots to cruise the net and praise him?
Two theories:
1. He has freaking lost his mind and all the stories about anger management problems, drug abuse, and narcissistic behavior are true. He really believes - like Trump - that he is the greatest person in the world and a "victim" of grave injustices. He also idiotically believes that a libel trial will solve all these problems after he already lost one trial in the UK - where libel actions are easier to bring and win.
2. This is all part of a plan to become a "celebrity" whose only claim to fame is being a celebrity. Sort of like Brittany Spears or the Kardashians - their only claim to fame is their arrest records and the shitty things they do (on purpose) to get attention. You can't be that type of celebrity without a lot of dirt in your past. No one reads tabloid articles about Tom Hanks.
The second theory makes more sense. His acting career is over, so he has to morph to "bad boy celebrity" mode, sort of like Charlie Sheen (Carlos Irwin Estévez), after he stopped looking cute. And these libel trials are doing a great job of keeping his name in the paper and on everyone's lips - there is no such thing as bad publicity. He is carefully molding his new image as a wounded victim of modern feminism, which will appeal to the young male demographic of gamers and incels.
He'll probably come out as a Republican, soon.
This trial (and accompanying online comments) are also an indictment of the "#metoo" movement - pushing back at the idea that someone's career should be over just because someone accuses them of something. Oddly enough, the #metoo movement seems to claim more Democrats than Republicans, as Democrats usually resign in shame, while Republicans just embrace the big lie (or one of the many big lies) and move on. Waddya gonna do about it?
I guess the point is, we are being manipulated - yet again. I could just feel it when I read some of these comments online - they were fake as fuck. It was like during the Trump era, where you would see this wall of comments about how great Trump was, and you had to wonder who these people really were. I can't put my finger on it, but it just felt fake. And today, well, we know they were fake. Some people still believe, though, and for true-believers, anything is true.
The comments are so bizarre and over the top that you almost have to laugh. One fellow opines, "The vast majority of the world loves Johnny Depp!" when in fact, the vast majority of the world doesn't know who he is - or cares. Bear in mind that there are billions of people in this world, and only about 330 million of them live in the United States. There is another planet beyond our borders - where more important things are going on other than celebrity hissy-fit trials.
But innocent civilians being gunned-down by Russians in Ukraine takes a back seat to a celeb-show-trial in this country, which is probably making Putin very happy. In fact, it makes you wonder who is behind the Johnny-bots. Not all Russian propaganda is along the lines of "Mother Russia is best at everything!" In fact, very little of it is.
You see, this whole thing plays into the misogyny and anti-feminism and "incel" angles - creating this visceral hatred of one woman over events that we, as ordinary citizens, really know nothing about - or should really care about. It works in so many ways - to divide Americans along political and gender lines, and to distract us from far more important things in the world.
And yet, here I am blathering on about it. Touché Putin, well played!
