How the "Manipulative Victim" Trope Shaped the Depp-Heard Trial

Why were so many people so ready to believe that Amber Heard was lying in Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against her? Does the answer actually have something to do with our popular storytelling tropes? Stories about women being deceptive or manipulative have been embedded in our culture for millennia, dating all the way back to Adam and Eve. And they’ve become crystalized in the figure of the devious “female mastermind,” who can lie and control others at will. Here’s our take on how our narratives around the Depp-Heard trial draw on the tropes of the perfect victim and the devious manipulative woman, and how both of these fictional ideas fuel dangerous societal misogyny.

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00:00 How the Manipulative Victim trope plays into the real world
02:00 What are these lying women born out of?
07:34 The myth of the "perfect victim"
11:50 Why are we so drawn to this dangerous trope?