The Dark Feminine: Why did Johnny Depp Fall in Love with Amber Heard?
A volatile young woman with a choice between power and self-destruction
Amber Heard lost the defamation trial brought against her by her ex-husband, Johnny Depp. But those on Heard’s side claim that the criticism of and ridicule directed at Heard has been artificially constructed - or, that it’s based solely on a sycophantic love for Depp, and that the fervency of internet commentary unfairly affected the verdict. Or, they claim, that at the heart of it, it’s all a result of misogyny.
Amber Heard has latched onto this idea, often using it as her main line of defence. She has been publicly shamed and humiliated because she is a woman. People don’t believe her, because she is a woman. She has disconnected with personal responsibility, and associated her plight with a demographic of people – so that she can claim that her loss, is a loss for all women. The backlash has nothing to do with her moral failings, deceit or malicious actions – those things all are somehow secondary to the fact that she is a woman.
In my previous essay, I spoke about Amber Heard’s psychopathic tendencies, and suggested that it may be a lack of soul, a lack of fundamental humanity, which causes her to act the way she does.
You’re not there. You’re not there. You were a fucking made-up thing in my head. (Johnny Depp to Amber Heard, recordings)
Amber Heard has displayed textbook narcissistic psychopathy, and although modern psychology has wrestled to diagnose this as a mental illness, there are many researchers (and victims) who have come to understand that psychopathy is a spiritual disease, one with no cure.
Are there really those who walk among us, in human bodies, who are not human?
If you’re hearing this for the first time, this can quite difficult to get your head around, and can take many years to fully understand and consider seriously. If you wish to instead explore this case from the perspective that Amber Heard is a human – a deeply flawed human, maybe, but a human, none the less - then we can do so.
Let’s explore her as a woman.
The Dark Feminine
In cultural consciousness across the world, there are many archetypical images associated with the evil woman; characters used to present the dark side of femininity.
Most commonly, she’s a seductress; a vamp, a succubus; the femme fatale; a mysterious, manipulative and malicious figure, who uses her beauty to enthral her lovers. We meet her in fairy tales as the enchantress, the evil queen, or the dark fairy. She appears throughout myth and religion: Lilith the first wife; Jezebel the princess; Tamamo-no-Mae, the demon. In literature and poetry and drama, old and contemporary – as Morgan le Fay, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Lady Macbeth, and Rebecca.
This seductress ensnares and lead her lovers to ruin; power hungry, she possesses, or seeks to possess elite social status and material power – as queen-consort or royal courtesan – through control of her admirers and destruction of her adversaries. Enticing and alluring, with an intoxicating charm, she is also haughty and reckless; prideful, treacherous, dangerously promiscuous, and murderous. She can be both woman and demon; a human and a chaotic expression of nature; girl and goddess. Vanity and envy are her characteristic sins, and she can be acutely histrionic…. even completely insane. She abuses the power granted to her by her beauty, blinded by selfish ambition, and fails to control her violent and overwhelming emotions.
Ultimately, having achieved her desires, she brings about her own destruction.
Modern feminist critics, writers, academics and journalists have attempted to redeem the archetype of the evil woman as a sympathetic, victimised figure: her destructive nature is actually a latent source of strength; her physical beauty is only a danger because she attracts the cruel attention of controlling men; her sexual and moral transgressions are something to be celebrated, even emulated. Many articles have been written arguing that the archetype of the evil woman is just a construction of ‘patriarchal anxiety’.
This is a mistake. These figures are not sexist insults or ideas to be deconstructed and reconstructed in a more modern, more politically acceptable light: they are reflections and a warning, to both men and woman. The dark feminine should not be ignored or dismissed, it is a reality that demands a certain degree of reverence. These figures are focused depictions: primordial understandings; characters through which we can recognise, and confront, the dark side of femininity.
As Carl Jung writes:
The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is.
There is a terrible power in unbridled female sexuality; there are certain heights of hysterical and destructive emotional instability that are particular to women; there is a certain underhanded, manipulative and poisonous violence that is recognisably feminine.
Euripides' Medea
One of my favourite depictions of the dark feminine can be found in ancient Greek theatre, in Euripides's tragic play, Medea.
The foreign princess and witch Medea, heartbroken over her husband coldly abandoning her in favour of another, more politically advantageous marriage, embarks on a self-destructive and vindictive murder spree. Using dark magic, she brutally murders her husband’s new wife; feigning acquiescence and friendship, she gifts her love rival a beautiful, poisoned robe – the princess happily puts it on, and it clings to her skin, dissolving her flesh to the bone. Her father, the king, is killed alongside her when he rushes to rescue his daughter.
Mirthful that her plan worked, Medea then prepares her ultimate punishment: the murder of her own sons - the destruction of her husband through the destruction of his lineage. She experiences emotional extremes of joy and sorrow simultaneously, ecstatic that her revenge is being successfully enacted, and agonized by her act of betrayal against nature itself, the abandonment of her motherly instinct as she prepares to destroy her own children.
The play is sensitive to Medea’s plight: the woes of being a woman trapped in an unhappy domestic situation, the gamble involved in selecting the right man to give your youth to, and the grief of betrayal. As a young girl, Medea sacrificed everything in order to aid her husband in his hero’s journey, only to be sacrificed herself, for his continuing pursuit of glory. She is a sympathetic character. But the play was a warning to the ancient Greek audience, that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and is a strong depiction of the dark side of femininity taken to the extremes: of emotional frenzy, manipulation, and violent vindictiveness, leading to the destruction of everything.
“We possess a woman’s nature — very skilled in every form of evil… and when she’s hurt in love, there is no heart more desperate for blood than hers…” - Medea
Modern Society, the Masculine & the Feminine
Today, we hear much talk about ‘toxic masculinity’… but these conversations end up being more about suppressing all expression of masculinity in men, rather than properly confronting the dark side of masculinity. At the same time, we hear a lot about ‘female empowerment’ and female strength… but, most of the time, depictions of actual feminine power and energy are nowhere to be seen. Female heroes in media and entertainment are instead stripped of their femininity, and heavily masculinized.
In this mess of misunderstanding and misattribution, we are becoming confused – losing a fundamental understanding of ourselves and each other, an understanding which we have developed over millennia through engagement with the ancient archetypical images in fables and stories and myths and legends. I would argue, that in the midst of this confusion, a balance has been toppled, restraints broken open, and a shadow is rising: the dark feminine is reigning unchecked and unchallenged.
When women are exalted for being cruel, cold man-eaters… and the relationship between men and woman is breaking down… when young women are inundated with displays of unapologetic vanity and seductiveness that they feel they must compete against… and it’s deemed sexist or old fashioned to suggest that there might be some value in chastity, while promiscuity has become so celebrated, prostitution so easy and profitable … is it any wonder that there has been a sharp rise in diagnosis of mental illness, and Cluster B personality disorders in women? Or that girls are increasingly becoming disconnected to, and rejecting their own sex?
Living within the heart of Hollywood, Amber Heard developed a haughty confidence with which she indulged in, used, excused, and justified, her dark side.
The House Inhabit exposé
In August 2022, an insider published a damning expose on Amber Heard’s past, claiming that Heard had long been the centre of a sordid and salacious elite party scene. The report claims that Heard attended wild evenings fueled by copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and hardcore sex, where she prostituted herself for wealthy men. Reportedly, she made a name for herself by bringing in young girls, luring in lesbians and recruiting struggling actresses to work as escorts and performers for top executives and billionaires. Recounting a scene at one of these events, a celebrity described: “young girls, rubbing all over each other in satanic-styled leather outfits on stage, Amber on a throne-like chair at the center.”
Amber Heard was said to spell-bind those who met her: “A few confessed to being so enthralled with Amber”, one contact is quoted to have said, “that they were willing to overlook toxic traits, drastic mood swings, and maniacal meltdowns to remain in her good graces… she possessed a unique magnetism that allowed her to manipulate people”. “She was so stunning in person,” they continue, “it was hard to concentrate.”
Her lovers, through all the abuse, were desperate to keep her happy. She wielded the power of her beguiling beauty and sexual allure like a weapon, and collected her lovers like “toys”.
As she seduced married men and vulnerable woman, Heard was said to rule through blackmail – collecting photos and videos and eye-witnesses loyal to her – and through this, “the queen of blackmail” has kept the elite and influential (including the mainstream media) on her side.
One source claimed that she will do “whatever she can do to get what she wants… [appearing] like an innocent well behaved put together woman who was so wronged by the world and everyone in it. She will hurt anyone in her path [and] wash her hands of blood with a smile on her face”.
Amber Heard's Dark Feminine
In interviews, Amber Heard openly admitted that she was hated for a laundry list of different things - but found it humorous, rather than concerning. She proudly declared that she’d rather be seen as a bitch, than be seen as sweet. She reacted with disdain when Johnny Depp advised her, that selling her body on the big screen, rather than developing a respectable reputation as an actress, wasn’t the wisest idea.
Amber Heard has been reportedly violent towards both her friends and lovers; and with her husband, she started fights, demanded his undiluted love and attention, and indulged in extremes of emotion, drugs and alcohol while holding him to a higher standard. She thought herself attractive for all this, considering herself loveably ‘feisty’.
Amber Heard seems to have quite comfortably bought the idea that as long as you come off in public as a woman who is ‘empowered’, then that is virtue enough, and you don’t have to worry about whether or not you actually have high moral standing.
Amber Heard wants to be seen as beyond reproach - by being a poster-girl for the fairer sex, while acting like the very worst kind of woman. But now, the public is seeing beyond the façade, and the façade held by other women like her.
Why did Johnny Depp fall in love with Amber Heard?
So why did Johnny Depp, a man who could have his pick of beautiful and successful woman, and who already had a long-standing relationship, fall so far in love with Amber Heard?
Perhaps Johnny Depp recognised early on that Amber possessed this profound darkness – something that he could empathise with, and loved about her. It was not only her physical allure, but the deep darkness within her that endeared her to him – a dark feminine so intense it seemed like she stepped straight out of a storybook.
It is clear from his work, his interests in art and music and literature, and the company that he keeps, that he has a somewhat gothic interest, a passion and appreciation for the shadow side of the human psyche. He is a flawed man himself, who struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, self-harm, and lasting psychological pain from a childhood of abuse and an adolescence filled with hardship. We know, too, that living a lifetime as an A-lister celebrity he will have met and fraternised with many gross, soulless and demonic people, and been tempted to integrate fully into the hell that is Hollywood. We have seen from his explicit texts that he is able to express, quite creatively, a cutting brutality.
But this doesn’t mean that he is a monster; for virtuous men are virtuous not because they have no evil (this would be too easy) but because they are able to recognise and sheathe that evil: and choose the good. Perhaps he had learned wisdom, that, as an older man, he wished to impart on this young woman – first, through recommending her a book, and later, through an intimate relationship.
Part of the pain that he experienced during his 6-year relationship with Amber Heard (part of the reason that he stayed so long) could be down to his desire to help her come to terms with herself. He was willing to endure the abuse, the insanity, the violence, and the destruction, because he saw something more in her: a strong potential… and believed that this troubled and volatile young woman, should she successfully overcome her chaotic nature, should she come to understand and integrate her shadow, restrain and master herself… that she would be a truly be a thing of power and beauty.
Sexy and frightening; seductive and enthralling, dangerous, and challenging, but also… productive, creative, and balanced.
Should she fight, and overcome her demons, she would become genuinely empowered. A woman who has not suppressed her dark feminine, and become something faint and wilting and incomplete: nor a woman who has given herself over to evil and chosen the easy side of life to her own fatal detriment; but a woman who understands her shadow, is engaged with it, and controls it… rather than being controlled by it.
The type of woman that every man secretly fears, and secretly wants.
The type of woman that could rule the world.
But, as he finally realised, it wasn’t going to happen. If he stayed with her, he would only be destroyed. Perhaps he blamed himself for his failure, his inability to help her … but knew, there was nothing more he could do.
Literary Parallels: Cersei Lannister
In the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novel series, a supremely beautiful and ambitious queen schemes and concentrates her power through seduction, manipulation and murder. In her mid-thirties, as she sits on top of the world, after a successful smear campaign that led to the imprisonment of one of her rivals,… it all comes crashing down.
In A Dance with Dragons, the queen is captured, detained, stripped of her clothes, and shorn clean: she is then sentenced to do penance for her lies, “her grievous falsehoods and fornications”, in front of the realm, by walking through the capital city streets entirely naked, entirely exposed, in a Walk of Shame.
As she walks, the crowds torment her, shouting that they know the truth about what’s she’s done – “whore” they shout, “traitor”, “sinner”.
“These creatures have no sweeter joy in life than jeering at their betters,” she thinks.
She could not silence them, so she must pretend she did not hear them.
Ghostly apparitions appear to remind her of people’s she’s betrayed in the past; “bells were ringing, ringing, ringing”. And the power of her beauty is nullified, as everyone now sees her exactly as she is – the ugliness inside and outside. As people hurl insults, she is forced to look at her own body, and for the first time, accepted that it is aging; that her physical beauty has been waning.
She felt old, used, filthy, ugly. There were stretch marks on her belly from the children she had borne, and her breasts were not as firm as they had been when she was younger. Without a gown to hold them up, they sagged against her chest.
“I should not have done this. I was their queen, but now they've seen, they've seen, they've seen. I should never have let them see. Gowned and crowned, she was a queen. Naked, bloody, limping, she was only a woman, not so very different from their wives, more like their mothers than their pretty little maiden daughters.
What have I done?”
She tries to hold her composure, to remain queenly, and pretend that she is unashamed:
“They think that this will break my pride, that it will make an end to me, but they are wrong.
I will not cringe for them.”
Eventually, she breaks: stumbling through the city’s filth in tears, covered in cuts, slipping in shit, eventually crawling on all fours, desperately trying to reach the end.
It was during her sloppy scheming and malicious plot to destroy the reputation of another through lies and slander, while arrogantly assuming the continued loyalty of those around her, that she made the mistake which landed her in detention. It was her own selfish, paranoid actions that lead to self-fulfilment of the prophecy given to her as a child, of how she will fall from power and meet her end. And she finds herself convicted of the crimes that she had falsely accused another of.
“This is my penance,” Cersei told herself.
“I have sinned most grievously; this is my atonement.
It will be over soon, it will be behind me, then I can forget.”
The most important part of this chapter is close, as she reaches the end of her walk of atonement. When she is greeted by her new champion – a giant of a construct that will assuredly win her victory in her upcoming trial through combat – Cersei has a sudden change in emotion:
“Yes,” thought Cersei Lannister.
“Oh, yes”.
Because Cersei Lannister - despite being stripped down, exposed, and forced to face reality in the most brutal way - has no capacity to repent, and no ability to connect with her unconscious.
Then the queen sends a letter to her lover asking for help - Jaime Lannister: her twin; a man who has been utterly loyal and devoted to her in mind and body; a man she abused, and cheated on, and used for her own political and social gain. Jaime sits by the fire and contemplates the letter carefully.
“Come at once.” It reads.
“Help me.
Save me.
I need you now as I have never needed you before.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Come at once.”
“Does my lord wish to answer?” the maester asked, after a long silence.
A snowflake landed on the letter. As it melted, the ink began to blur. Jaime rolled the parchment up again, as tight as one hand would allow.
“No,” he said. “Put this in the fire.”
Since the close of the trial, and throughout all the backlash, Amber Heard has tried desperately to recover some reputation: mostly by looking for ways to nullify or appeal the trial’s verdict, attacking her detractors and labelling them as liars and abusers, or continuing to plead her case in mainstream media interviews and social media publications. She has tried to bait out her ex-husband’s attention, and continue the fight. She has not stopped, taken a step back, and considered her position. She has not, despite all she’s gone through, seemed to have learnt anything.
As with the dark queens from cautionary tales ancient and modern, there is no redemption arc for her: only a great fall, an all-consuming burning desire for revenge against narcissistic injury.
“She’s a beautiful woman, [and] ultimately that beauty causes her demise and the demise of others characters around her…. it was an interesting part [to play].” - Amber Heard