Johnny Depp Defamation Trial a Public Spectacle

In 1895, Oscar Wilde had his boyfriend’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, arrested for accurately suggesting that Wilde was a homosexual. Forced to prove that Wilde was indeed a “somdomite,” as Queensberry had put it in the misspelled note that sparked a chain reaction of misery, Queensberry’s lawyers lined up testimony from several young men who had had sex with Wilde. The evidence not only vindicated Queensberry but damned Wilde: Though it was seldom prosecuted, gay sex was illegal in Victorian England, and for many years thereafter. Her Majesty’s prosecutors had little choice but to follow through on the evidence yielded by the first trial and put Wilde himself in the dock. Convicted of gross indecency, he wound up in a filthy jail cell for two years of hard labor. By the time he emerged, the prancing japester of the era was a broken husk, and he died three years after that.

The Oscar Wilde of our times is Johnny Depp: a fantastically talented yet unimaginably self-deluding fool who has, for the second time in two years, demanded a trial that he is sure to lose, and which is sure to further disgrace him. Like Wilde, he should have declined to make himself a public spectacle and simply gone back to work. We can only hope Depp’s fate is not as dire as Wilde’s.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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In 1895, Oscar Wilde had his boyfriend’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, arrested for accurately suggesting that Wilde was a homosexual. Forced to prove that Wilde was indeed a “somdomite,” as Queensberry had put it in the misspelled note that sparked a chain reaction of misery, Queensberry’s lawyers lined up testimony from several young men who had had sex with Wilde. The evidence not only vindicated Queensberry but damned Wilde: Though it was seldom prosecuted, gay sex was illegal in Victorian England, and for many years thereafter. Her Majesty’s prosecutors had little choice but to follow through on the evidence yielded by the first trial and put Wilde himself in the dock. Convicted of gross indecency, he wound up in a filthy jail cell for two years of hard labor. By the time he emerged, the prancing japester of the era was a broken husk, and he died three years after that.

The Oscar Wilde of our times is Johnny Depp: a fantastically talented yet unimaginably self-deluding fool who has, for the second time in two years, demanded a trial that he is sure to lose, and which is sure to further disgrace him. Like Wilde, he should have declined to make himself a public spectacle and simply gone back to work. We can only hope Depp’s fate is not as dire as Wilde’s.