I have always wanted to discuss and do more research on this issue that has been occurring a lot in recent years- Cancel Culture. However, I was not sure which category to fit this specific civic issue topic, so for my last post, I wanted to include this debate that has made quite a stir in our generation’s mainstream culture.
I believe we are all familiar with this person by now, being one of the most famous actors in the Hollywood and entertainment industry, Johnny Depp’s name has been brought up all over the internet.
“The defamation trial in Virginia between the actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has become a fierce battleground over the truth about their relationship, with both sides accusing the other of repeated domestic abuse in what was an unquestionably tumultuous marriage.” — The New York Time
“Hollywood’s Ugliest Divorce”
Under Hollywood’s spotlight, it is not uncommon for A-listers to go through a messy divorce. Johnny Depp and Amber heard, for example, finalized their divorce back in 2017, but the problems and controversy went on.
“I was afraid he was going to kill me, either intentionally or just by losing control and going too far,” Amber Heard alleged during a July 2020 court appearance. “He explicitly threatened to kill me many times, especially later in our relationship.”
Johnny Depp, for his part, has repeatedly denied all her accusations. He spoke publicly about the abuse claims during an interview in the November 2018 issue of GQ, saying, “Ultimately, the truth will come out in all of this and I will be standing on the right side of the roaring rapids. I hope other people will be too.”
While taking the stand in his libel trial against Amber Heard, Johnny Depp addressed his ex-wife’s claims of domestic abuse.
As for now, according to sources from AS news, Johnny Depp is being cross-examined by lawyers representing his ex-wife Amber Heard in a mutual defamation lawsuit. He is suing her for $50 million claiming that a 2018 article she wrote in the Washington Post resulted in days later in Disney dropping him from the 6th installment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.
What is Cancel Culture?
Merriam-Webster defines cancel culture as the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.
Many people assumed the action of “canceling” a person to be a mob mentality or even a way to give justice back to the people that were harmed, essentially following the eye for an eye principle. According to Vox, some even came up with the term “celebrity hunting season”- meaning an unstoppable force descending to ruin one’s career of anyone that dares to go against what the majority of people deemed as the “moral boundaries”.
Here is a clip of Johnny Depp speaking about Cancel Culture-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKAwbeBFjv8
“One sentence, that’s all it takes.”
When you make your identity, face, and reputation public for a long enough time, you know better than anyone that public opinion like backlashes can destroy not only your career but your whole entire life.
There is a Chinese slang that literally translates as “human flesh search”. This term is meant to be silly, as it suggests that being human-powered to find information about someone they wanted to know is equivalent to advanced computer search engines. I believe, there are times when Americans thought they were just making fun of incidents and people with memes and light-hearted comments on the internet, but that eventually turned to someone’s life being demolished and the consequence of forever living with those hate comments and being kept out by society.
The cancel culture is an influential phenomenon that incites many social conversations. Is cancel culture an important tool of social justice or another form of hero complex in the play? Mob intimidation?
Also, there is not really a measurement to see how “canceled” a person is getting, in that sense, does cancel culture even exist?
Work Sources
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/30/20879720/what-is-cancel-culture-explained-history-debate
Johnny Depp Takes Stand, Denies Amber Heard’s ‘Heinous’ Allegations in Court
Hollywood’s Ugliest Divorces: From Johnny and Amber to Erika and Tom
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cancel%20culture
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/05/19/americans-and-cancel-culture-where-some-see-calls-for-accountability-others-see-censorship-punishment/