LONG READ: Depp, Heard, and Netflix hyper-real

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who coined the term hyper-real, defined it as “inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies”.

In this context, the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard courtroom drama and the Netflix series based on it are quite revealing about our ‘basic instincts’ (pun intended) and desire to peer into the ‘Lives of Others’.

Had it been a slapstick Bollywood movie, it would have been aptly titled ‘Pirate, Biwi, aur Adaalat’.

Facts vs simulation

William Faulkner’s idea that the best fiction is far truer than any kind of journalism, and the best journalists have always known it, is said to be the genesis of Thompson brand Gonzo journalism. The practitioner of this style – the reporter – puts themselves in the heart of the story, and is an active participant rather than merely a detached observer.

It blends a unique story-telling technique, energetic narrative style, freewheeling use of invectives, and blurs the boundary between fiction and non-fiction.

The multi-million-dollar Hollywood defamation trial involving actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard involved all the characteristics of a perfect Gonzo script: evasiveness of realism, volley of accusations, shifting narratives, and quick sand of bewilderment.

Polarizing the Internet, the trial soon became a totem of culture war divisiveness as well as the recoil against the self-righteous enforcers and moral police of cultural dogmas.

Ending in the favour of Depp, Heard was asked to shell out $10 million – a dark day for feminism, some may lament. A victory for equality, others may say.

It was more than a mere demonstration of dirty linen washed in open for pseudo voyeuristic, narcissistic consumption of the audience. The trial soon turned into a reality show that promises everything that’s exclusive, spontaneous and un-choreographed – the real intimate details.

Dinar of attention

Italian writer Umberto Eco was prescient when he said that celebrity culture and public recognition today rests on being viewed 24*7. In the marketplace of public recognition and acceptance, narcissism is a more tradable currency than the greenback and the bullion, and ultimate self-disclosure is the Blue chip stock in its stock exchange.

Tolstoy’s controversial Kreutzer Sonata – named after Beethoven’s symphony in which notes are discordant and emotional passion is heightened – is a confessional account of a jealous, rage-filled marriage in which everything is as wrong as it gets.

Beethoven, the maestro, named the sonata after German violinist Rudhophe Kreutzer, who ultimately hated it and vowed never to play it.

The interplay of pathos and rage, or eros and thanatos, the life-instinct and the death instinct, is a constant tension that is always on the verge of breaking apart.

In most torrid relations gone horribly wrong, it’s changing of frame from one passion to the other, and the intermingling of orderly and chaotic.

Anxiety of influence

Johnny and Amber first met on the set of ‘The Rum Diary’, based on the namesake novel of Hunter S. Thompson. Known as his ‘long lost novel’, it took more than four decades to get published.

The idea to turn it into a movie was Hunter’s and he approached his friend Depp for it. Together they started fund-raising and scouting for directors and cast.

In fact, while most of his fans know Johnny for the cult hit ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ series, the two movies where he tried to get into the skin of a real person and merged celluloid with life were the Rum Diary and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Both of these tanked at the box office.

It won’t be far-fetched that Depp, a bigger celebrity than Hunter, was greatly influenced by him. When they met, Hunter made him read out loud his works after drinking at Woody Creek, a local tavern, and shooting in the backyard of Owl Farm, his home near Aspen, Colorado.

It’s often said that to understand a man fully, trace the animating influences that reside in his subconscious recesses.

Hunter made a name for himself as a trailblazing celebrity journalist, a roving literary rockstar, a swaggering alcohol and drug fueled enfant terrible, and a cultural influence in his own right.

He epitomized acerbic wit, wildly original style, sardonic humor, provocative prose, eccentric lifestyle, an idiosyncratic I-don’t give-a-damn hard knuckle American spirit, and constant life on the edge.

Through the marriage of lapidary lyricism and insuperable macho assertion in his prose, he harbored the grand ambition to outdo two of his heroes: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Fear and Loathing has become a memorable catchphrase that represents both an imminent sense of doom, and a burning desire to beat all odds and succeed no matter what it takes.

“It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going.”, Hunter’s alter ego Paul Kemp says in The Rum Diary.

While his ambition was to write a ‘Great American Novel’ and he called his real journalistic beat ‘the Death of the American Dream’, Hunter abandoned many novels halfway.

His first and only novel – about the hilarious escapades of a bunch of hard-living, sodden troublemaker journalists in 1950s Puerto Rico – got published after 40 years.

By that time, he had established a reputation as the pioneer of Gonzo journalism, winning a legion of admirers from Jack Nicholson to Jimmy Carter.

He got what all writers dream of but only a handful ever achieve – multiple biographies, cinematic adaptations, lectures at leading universities, and a powerful influence on the everyday low-brow as well as the rarefied highbrow.

A recent biography by David S. Wills ‘High White Notes: Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism’ is a splendid work both to understand the Hunter phenomenon and dive into his mind as a writer and a person.

Hunter’s reading was eclectic and so were the influences that shaped his writing and his personality.

“From Kerouac, he knew it was possible to write about one’s own life and celebrate the debauched, downtrodden elements. From Donleavy and Burroughs, he knew that you could say and do profoundly shocking things as a form of humor. From Hemingway came stoicism and from Fitzgerald came hedonism, and from each came elements of language”, writes Wills in the book.

JP Donleavy, an Irish American writer whose novel ‘The Ginger Man’, was subject to obscenity trials in America, was another underrated influence on the Hunter persona. It’s the story of a hard-drinking, nihilistic American expatriate living in Ireland.

Real meets reel

Why a long-winding digression on Hunter, while talking about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard?

Just like Hunter had his own anxiety of influence, Depp too was profoundly influenced by Hunter’s persona as well his literature.

The transgressive thrill to get subsumed, to face challenges, to flout conventionally accepted boundaries, to stake it all and face the precipice, and the strange admixture of facts, fiction, flights of fantasy and respite in literary inspiration, was trademark Hunter.

Another interesting thing about ‘The Rum Diary’ is that it was inspired by Hemingway’s first novel. Hunter hoped his book would be to San Juan, what ‘The Sun Also Rises’ was for Paris.

“When she walked into the office, I knew that’s the Chenault that Hunter wants. Yep, she could definitely kill me”, said Johnny Depp on his first encounter with Amber Heard.

The character of Chenault is said to be very loosely based on Hunter’s wife Sandy but was influenced by American divorcee Brett Ashley who held an intimidatingly seductive sway on men.

Hemingway, in a letter to his friend Thomas Bledsoe, said that he got the idea for the book while being treated in a hospice in Italy during the First World War, when he saw young men forever incapacitated due to physical injuries.

While Sun Also Rises succeeded for its candid portrayal of easy-living, free-loving, and wild-partying life in 1920s Europe, the theme at its core was metaphorical emasculation. The Rum Diary emulated it.

The celluloid femme fatale character/projection of Heard was someone that Depp passionately desired. Not for her charm or appeal, but what she embodied for him.

Like the Gonzo world, fact and fiction got rolled into one. There’s an element of Gatsbyian parody in it and the razor’s edge of what I term a torrid Nietzschean-Jüngerian romance.

‘One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired’ 

Disclaimer: Views expressed are the author’s own.