The Depp / Heard Trial was a Low Point for Society

The actors may be public figures, but they are not public property.

It was practically impossible to avoid the 6-week spectacle that dominated every news cycle and publishing outlet and social media platform. There were memes, animated sketches, parodies and mocking former spouses Johnny Depp and Amber Heard as every gruesome detail of their explosive marriage and grisly dynamic unfolded before the entire world in a live television court hearing.

I cannot remember another point in my lifetime that a trial involving two adult, intimate partners of any social status played out the ills of their marriage on such a grand stage. Sometimes it felt like dramatic theater, quiet and intense, at other times it felt like a pantomime, featuring a colorful cast of campy characters.

I watched a few days of the trial, but admittedly had a difficult time listening as the actors regaled the more graphic details of physical and verbal abuse levied at each other over the course of five years. As a survivor of domestic abuse myself, it was uncomfortably familiar and, at times, far too distressing- triggering even- to allow myself to become more invested in the daily chaos surrounding what will certainly go down in history as one of the lowest points of our cultural progress.