You’ve got Mail starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
You may remember it as the RomCom with Dave Chappelle.
Or perhaps you confused it with Sleepless in Seattle, also starring Meg Ryan and Tom
Hanks.
Or Joe Versus the Volcano, also starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
It’s definitely not the “I’ll have what she’s having movie” also starring Meg
Ryan but not Tom Hanks.
Now, you may have never seen You’ve Got Mail, and you may not want to.
But you should, because of one important fact: It’s the most successful adaptation of George
Orwell’s 1984 ever made.
Ok, not entirely, but this movie is seriously subversive.
And by the end, you’ll be saying with me: Tom Hanks is Big Brother.
Big Brother is love.
So please join me as I ruin a movie you thought was exempt from the prying minds of Wisecrack.
And spoilers a- ah fuck it.
You’ve Got Mail is the story of a small business owner, Kathleen Kelly,
being crushed under the heel of a massive corporation, Fox and Sons.
Kelly runs The Shop Around the Corner, a children’s book store,
when a Barnes and Noble-esque mega chain opens up in the neighborhood.
Kelly can’t keep up with the low prices of Fox and Sons,
or the charm of Tom Hank’s character Joe Fox "Joe.
Just call me Joe"
and is eventually forced to close down the business that her mother passed down to her.
While all of this is happening, Kelly starts romancing a stranger on the internet,
despite the fact that she’s already in a relationship with a writer who hates technology
"You think this machine is your friend but it's not" and name drops Heidegger
"He's always talking about Heidegger..." ...and Foucault
so you know - shout out to that guy.
The stranger is none other than Joe Fox, heir apparent of Fox and Sons,
who is also flirting with a stranger on the internet while in a monogamous relationship.
Ok, so it’s the classic will they or won’t they story of two people falling in love.
It even draws heavily on the 1940s romance “The Shop Around the Corner”,
from which Kathleen’s store derives its name.
So what makes it Orwellian?
George Orwell’s 1984 is the story of a guy named Winston Smith who lives in the totalitarian
regime of Oceania.
In Oceania, loyalty to the party is paramount, truth is malleable,
and as Winston naively muses, the only freedom you have exists in the few cubic centimeters
of space of your brain cavity.
After flirting with freedom, he’s tortured into confessing his crimes
against Big Brother.
The book is about being crushed under the heel of a totalitarian system.
By contrast, You’ve Got Mail is the story of being crushed under the heel of big business.
Tom Hanks and his family are cruel corporate despots who take glee in crushing small business
owners like Kathleen Kelly "Listen, I have a sad announcement to make.
City books, on 23rd street, it's going under" "Aww another independent bites the dust.
Whereas Kelly finds her life's work in transmitting the joy of reading to a new generation, "Because
when you read a book as a child, it becomes part of your identity
in a way that no other reading in your whole life does",
the ideals of Fox and Sons are just a facade to make more profit
"We're also going to have a section dedicated just to writers who've lived on the west side"
"as a sop to the neighborhood" "Perfect, keep those west side liberal nut pseudo intellectuals."
"readers, dad, they're called readers" "don't do that son, don't romanticize them".
But let’s consider the two endings.
In You’ve Got Mail, Kelly begrudgingly befriends her business rival once she’s left unemployed
and with no hope for the future.
Fox realizes he’s been talking to Kelly all along, but she doesn’t.
So he plays it slow until the two anonymous internet lovers finally decide to meet in
person.
And for Kelly, surprise, it’s Joe Fox.
But in the final moments of the film, she has this to say:
"I wanted it to be you.
I wanted it to be you so badly".
And in 1984, there’s this...
"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.
He had won the victory over himself.
He loved Big Brother.”
Wilson finally comes to love the warming embrace of Big Brother.
While the party could have simply killed or lobotomized him,
it's far more preferable for him to embrace his oppression.
As Winston is told by his torturer, the point is not to confess, or punish, but to change.
"All the confessions made here are true.
We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us.
As long as he resists us, we never destroy him.
We make him one of ourselves before we kill him".
Is this not the real message of You’ve Got Mail?
It’s not enough for Kelly to be broken and beaten,
she must also fall in love with the living symbol of her destitution
"How can you forgive this guy for standing you up and not forgive me of this one tiny
little thing of putting you out of business"
But unlike 1984, You’ve Got Mail imagines power as an act of seduction.
Joe Fox uses the language explicitly.
As he prepares to open the bookstore amidst fears of public backlash, "This is the upper
west side, man, we might as well tell them we’re opening a crackhouse.
They're gonna hate us".
He says "We're going to seduce them, we're going to
seduce them with our square footage, and our discounts, and our deep arm chairs, and our
cappuccinos, that's right.
They're going to hate us at the beginning, but we'll get 'em in the end.
You know why?"
"Why?"
"Cause we’re going to sell them cheap books and legal addictive stimulants.”
And before you accuse me of stretching, consider this: There’s an overt reference to being
seduced by a Fascist dictator in the film.
In one scene, a friend of Kelly’s tries to comfort her after she decides to close
the store.
Using militaristic metaphors, she consoles Kelly: "You are marching into the unknown
armed with...nothing ".
And then, has this story to tell "Now I suppose you want me to tell you who it was I fell
madly in love with... but im not going to tell."
"Who was it, Birdie?"
"It wasn't meant to be..."
"Why not?"
"He ran spain."
"Spain?"
"The country, he ran it, it was his job!
And then he died, just as well".
Who exactly is this mythical love who ran spain?
“She fell in love with Generallismo Franco" "Oh don't say that.
Really, we don't know that for sure-" well we don't know for sure."
"Who else could it have been?
It was probably around 1960".
And for some quick context - that’s Francisco Franco, who staged a fascist coup against
Spain’s democratic republic in the 30s, allied himself with Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy, and regularly killed political opponents
"People do really stupid things in foreign countries".
"Absolutely.
They buy leather jackets for much more than their worth but they don’t fall in love
with fascist dictators" .
While Winston eventually comes to love Big Brother,
like Kelly comes to love Fox, there’s another layer explore with Orwell.
In the dystopia of Oceania, private lives cannot exists, for they might conflict with
the party, but that especially includes romance.
The Party allows marriages insofar as they beget more future party members -
but shun any marriages motivated by love.
In totalitarianism, both real and fiction, social bonds are destroyed to solidify the
totalitarian relation to the state.
And aside from brainwashing Winston, the other great trick of his torturer is to
get Winston to betray his love Julia, and for her to betray him.
" "Do it to Julia.
I don't care what you do to her, but do it to her.
Tear her face off, but do it to Julia, not to me".
and for her to betray him: "I told them all about you".
Is this not the story of Kelly leaving her boyfriend, in favor of Fox?
In fact, the inciting argument to their breakup is our aforementioned conversation about Franco.
Kelly’s boyfriend cannot imagine how someone could love a fascist: "She's out of her mind"
Kelly can: "She is not!"
He can’t be with someone who isn’t interested in politics
- "I can never be with someone who doesn't take politics as seriously as I do".
And well, Kelly can - "I didn’t vote."
But of course, it’s not just romantic relationships.
Totalitarianism must define our very identities, something Joe Fox is keenly aware of
“The whole purpose of places like starbucks is for people with no decision making ability
whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.
Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc.
So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are, can - for
only 2.95 - can get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self.
Tall!
Decaf!
Cappuccino!"
"Tall decaf cappuccino?"
It’s not just enough for modern business to win.
It must strip you down and build you right back up.
It must lay the foundations of your identity and your innermost desires.
In short, You’ve Got Mail is the story of a woman crushed by the system, left jobless
and destitute, who nevertheless falls in love with the personification
of her defeat: Joe Fox aka Big Brother.
And it’s not just enough to lose the battle against Big Business, you have to fall in
love with him too.
"I wanted it to be you so badly."
"I love you."
And that’s the truly subversive thing about You’ve Got Mail -
that this bleak message on the futility of resistance could be packaged in a saccharine
rom com featuring two of America’s sweethearts.
. Not only must Meg Ryan fall in love with Tom Hanks, we must fall in love with the idea
of being trampled by the march of history - brought to you by America Online, of course.
Just kidding.
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