The Captain and the Turd: the power of fandom in celebrity scandals

In the aftermath of the actor Alyssa Milano’s seismic #MeToo tweet, many fans have had to contend with the knowledge that a favourite celebrity might be guilty of sexual violence. However, whilst the reaction to #MeToo was unprecedented, there has always been a resistance to it. As Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kathryn Claire Higgins (2023) point out, another key historical moment that developed alongside #MeToo was the contentious ‘post-truth’ debate. This, alongside the growing trend in defamation cases brought against women who have accused men of violence (Jennifer Robinson and Keina Yoshida 2023), has resulted in a strong backlash narrative that positions (powerful, white) men as the real victims. Where #MeToo centres women speaking out against sexual violence, the #MeToo backlash is centred around concern for the reputation of the accused. As such, women’s material victimisation is being conflated with the discursive victimisation of accused men. This is further complicated when the man being accused is a celebrity, whose reputation represents not only him, but his fans as well.

This paper considers how the above debate plays out on social media by drawing on the recent celebrity scandal and defamation lawsuit involving Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. It explores how fandom works to reconstruct narratives around celebrities accused of sexual violence, and how that complicates public understandings of violence against women. Based on the research and data collected as part of my PhD, this paper analyses social media posts collected the day before and the day of the Depp v Heard verdict announcement (31 May – 1 June 2022) from both ‘pro-Heard’ and ‘pro-Depp’ hashtags. Building on existing feminist literature on contemporary backlashes against feminism, and writing on the ‘post-truth’ debate, my analysis shows how fandoms can control, and distort, public understandings of violence against women as a means of defending the reputation of an accused celebrity. As anxieties over the rise in popular misogyny continue to grow, it is essential to understand how these narratives operate online, in order to effectively challenge them.