thoughts on you've got mail
dear readers,
This weekend I watched you've got mail for the very first time, encountering my first of the meg ryan + tom hanks oeuvre. Apart from making me wish for the simpler times of the internet, I had a few thoughts.
It's striking how much the film truly minimises real consequences while framing the story as endlessly charming. Kathleen loses her independent and lovingly maintained bookshop to a corporate chain, the eponymous Fox Books, which the movie treats as background to the romantic plot. This appears to me to reflect a broader 90s-00s cultural shift, including the the prioritisation of convenience over community. The destruction of the bookstore is glossed over, dare I say normalised, despite representing tangible economic, social, and emotional losses for Kathleen Kelly.
The ethical implications deepen, in my view, when considering Joe's role. He masquerades as an anonymous emailer, building intimacy with Kathleen while concealing his true identity. To me, this is a clear example of emotional manipulation. Kathleen trusts and shows her vulnerable side to someone deliberately misrepresenting themselves; someone who has the perfect possibility to reveal their true identity. However, you've got mail frames this as charmingly romantic and witty. None of these issues are resolved through communication or accountability, instead Kathleen is relieved that the man who ruined her livelihood is the one that she has been communicating with the entire time. The story this establishes, and reinforces, the trope that emotional deception and destruction is irrelevant if it ends in love. Any kind of emotional harm on Kathleen's side is completely glossed over, subtly insinuating that if any woman is in a similar situation, that she ought to give up her livelihood for the chance at romance.
This combination of material and emotional erasure is significant. While Kathleen loses her bookstore, Joe's deception is forgiven, and the corporate entity that destroyed her business faces nothing other than a rather short and ineffectual media campaign. The film's resolution, which ignores everything other than the fact love 'persists' reflects the burgeoning aestheticisation where individual or corporate desire is priorities over ethical, social, or economic accountability. In the 90s and 00s, and to be honest, a continuing issue, small businesses are being increasingly displaced by large, emotionless franchises
Furthermore, the narrative frames love as the ultimate force that has power over everything. All moral compromises are justifiable if the end result is (hopefully) love. This romantic framing allows the film to sidestep the difficult questions that arise about labour, trust, and power. Kathleen's bookshop, agency and boundaries are all rendered secondary to the rom-coms resolution. Meanwhile, Joe's manipulative nature is excused by charm, humour, and ignored at the eventual revelation of his identity. The film's structure normalises this idea that happiness, particularly romantic happiness, can justify deception and erasure.
By no means am I saying that enjoying you've got mail is bad, or that the film doesn't have moments of genuine warmth, rather, it has some moments that subtly legitimise questionable acts or business practices. The depiction of online communication in those times, and the way friendships of any kind can develop through letters, emails or over social media, is just as important, valuable, and can make a massive impact on you. The movie captures the burgeoning possibilities of this kind of communication and how technology can foster vulnerability and connection. But even acknowledging that, it's impossible to ignore that the film is undoubtedly problematic, as it romanticises emotional deception, erases material consequences, and frames small-scale labour as expendable and unnecessary in the face of large corporates that can provide anything and everything (usually apart from authenticity and warmth). I appreciate the emails, the charm, the nostalgia, the wonderful decor and outfits, but the underlying ethical and economic issues left a bad taste in my mouth.
thank you for reading!
signed in invisible ink, luminula xxx
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