In 1957, Sylvia Plath wrote in her diaries about the love tangles of some Hollywood greats:
Liz taylor is getting Eddie Fisher away from Debbie Reynolds who appears cherubic, round-faced, wronged, in pincers and house robe – Mike Todd barely cold. How odd these events affect one so. Why? Analogies?
Of course, Plath herself was not to know that her own drama would one day take on a mythical dimension. The characters of Plath and Ted Hughes, once real people, are now elevated to archetypal giants: the wronged wife, the bad husband, and the new, prettier, younger bride. Neither Sophocles nor Euripides could ask for more.
In Ancient Greek theatre the faces of the actors were always concealed by masks, a dramatic convention that seems strange by our modern standards but which reminds us, perhaps, that the actors were nothing more than a screen for our own projections.
So it is with Amber Heard and Johnny Depp who have occupied both column inches and trending bandwidth with their unfolding – and increasingly public – dramas. First there was public (read: social media) consternation over the allegation that Heard had filed for divorce from recent spouse Depp just days after the death of his mother.
Further dismay was generated by the fact that, though childless, she had filed for spousal support – whereas Vanessa Paradis, Depp’s former long-term partner and mother to his children – had made no such claims to the Depp fortune.
The drama then took a darker turn when allegations of domestic abuse surfaced, causing the internet chorus to up arms in judgement, either of Depp for being an abuser, or of Heard for being an opportunist. This prompted Paradis herself to appear: a deus-ex-machina, descending onto the stage with mechanical wings blazing to defend her former partner.
