Is Tom Hanks’ Joe Fox in You’ve Got Mail not actually that toxic after all? He does make some questionable choices, and it can make you doubt at points – how romantic is this story of his courtship with Meg Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly? But as shady as some of his actions might be, Joe’s duplicity gets at the ultimate message of the film – which is that a lot of us are actually living double lives, often without realizing it. This duality is central to the romance because Kathleen also isn’t living her truest life. So why are we so afraid to be our best selves, when we know it’s going to make us happy? And what is it that finally pushes us over the edge to make that change?

Transcript

Tom Hanks’ Joe Fox makes some questionable choices in You’ve Got Mail, and it can make you doubt at points – how romantic is this story of his courtship with Meg Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly?

After Joe discovers that they’re each other’s secret internet pen pals, he keeps that a secret from her, while manipulating her into falling for him in real life. As shady as all that is, though, Joe’s duplicity gets at the ultimate message of the film – which is that a lot of us are actually living double lives, often without realizing it. This duality is central to the romance because Kathleen also isn’t living her truest life. So why are we so afraid to be our best selves, when we know it’s going to make us happy? And what is it that finally pushes us over the edge to make that change? Here’s our take on You’ve Got Mail, and our defense of some of Joe Fox’s more toxic traits.

“How about some coffee… ...or drinks or dinner… ...or a movie… ...for as long as we both shall live?”

- Joe Fox

JOE AND KATHLEEN - PLAYING “ROLES” WE DON’T LIKE

Joe and Kathleen actually meet online, anonymously, and begin an email relationship where they’re deeply in tune with and intuitively understand each other. When they meet in person for the first time, too – when Joe brings his family members to Kathleen’s story hour without telling her who he is –they also have immediate chemistry. This meeting feels like a sliding doors moment for Joe. He faces a choice: whether to be the nice, vulnerable version of himself, who’s clearly enchanted with this person; or the arch-capitalist who treats Kathleen with distance and disdain. When Joe meets Kathleen again, and she finds out his identity as part of the “Fox Books” family threatening her independent bookstore, he reflexively slips into the latter – because that’s the callous, guarded role he’s used to playing. In a similar way, Kathleen’s detest for Joe is based on his reputation and a lot of assumptions, rather than anything she’s seen of him firsthand. So despite their deeper impulse to like each other, both let their circumstances dictate that they’re suddenly entrenched in a hostile rivalry.

“What will NY152 say today?’ I wonder. I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects.”

- Kathleen Kelly

More broadly, both are living the lives they think they should instead of the ones they really want – as we can see in their choice of partners. Joe is dating Patricia, a cynical and self-centered book editor who is basically the image of how Joe sees himself at the beginning of the film.

And Kathleen is dating Frank, a moralizing and somewhat pretentious writer who aligns with her artsy, cultured lifestyle. Yet neither Kathleen nor Joe seems to like or even engage with their partner very deeply.

“I love how you’ve totally forgotten that you’ve had any role in her current situation. It’s so obtuse. So insensitive. Reminds me of someone. Me!”

- Patricia Eden

The disconnect between how Joe and Kathleen act in the real world versus in their email exchanges underlines how automatically we all slide into roles in the exterior world, often while feeling totally differently inside. Many of Kathleen’s and Joe’s in-person interactions are followed by online confessions that they weren’t happy with how they behaved or didn’t feel it was an authentic expression of the person they want to be. Joe is too business-minded, undervaluing sentiment because of how his wealthy, bottom-line-driven family has conditioned him. Meanwhile, Kathleen is too personally invested in her business She’s clinging to the shop as a way to avoid fully having to separate from her late mother – seeing it almost as an extension of her Mom’s life. Much of her anger at Joe is really sadness that her mom’s shop isn’t equipped to survive in a modern capitalist landscape, and losing the shop makes her feel the loss of her mother all over again.

“I was decorating my Christmas tree, unwrapping funky ornaments made of popsicle sticks and missing my mother so much I almost couldn’t breathe.”

- Kathleen Kelly

But in fighting so hard to keep the store open, she’s not facing the reality of her mother’s death And she’s ultimately living her Mom’s life, devoting herself to her mother’s memory instead of pursuing her own dreams. This is similar to how Joe blindly carries on his family business while fearful of the person it’s turning him into. It’s only when Joe’s and Kathleen’s business relationship ends – because Kathleen’s shop is forced to close — that they get the chance to start again. Kathleen is forced to push herself into new, original territory. And the pair can just…get to know each other, like they did online, and realize organically that they get on pretty well.

“If I really knew you I know what I’d find. Instead of a brain, a cash register. Instead of a heart, a bottom line.”

- Joe Fox

Their happy ending (which feels so precarious, so close to not happening) reminds us how hard it is to stop behaving automatically as we think we should, and start living as our real selves – and how rewarding it is if we take the leap.

WHAT HOLDS US BACK

So, if we know what we really want, what’s actually stopping us from just going for it? One big lesson in the film is how hard it is to change someone’s first impression of you, and there is a scientific basis to this. Psychologist Bertram Gawronski found that, after a bad first impression, the brain treats any later experiences that contradict the first impression as exceptions to the rule. This means that, if you really want to change a first impression, you have to be persistent.

You’ve Got Mail is loosely inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and likewise in that story there’s a major roadblock for Elizabeth and Mr Darcy’s romance created by bad first impressions. The very title Pride and Prejudice also gets at two of the inner factors that make us so blinded by first impressions. In Pride and Prejudice, the more obvious narrative is that wealthy snob Darcy is too proud, and Elizabeth is too prejudiced against him based on false information she’s heard about him – just as in this story, Kathleen is prejudiced against proud Joe due to Fox Books. But as Joe himself suggests, really both characters are prejudiced and proud.

“She was too proud. Or was she too prejudiced… ...and Mr. Darcy is too proud?”

- Pride and Prejudice

Fire Island, a contemporary queer retelling of the same story, emphasizes how our surrounding societies can reinforce these bad qualities in us. Will may be stand-offish, but his rich friends are actively rude to Noah and his group, and so Noah sees that as evidence that Will is cut from the same cloth. Each has to be similarly persistent for these impressions to be overcome.

What’s really holding all these characters back is putting social emotions over primary emotions — thinking too much about what other people might think, and not what we feel. Joe doesn’t follow his gut about “enchanting” Kathleen – just as Kathleen quickly forgets the person she liked in the bookstop and jumps to believing she knows exactly who “Joe Fox” is based on his name. Trusting our first impressions is an act of self-preservation. An evolutionary response as we try to decide quickly who is a friend, and who is a threat. But if we’re not open to the idea that maybe those first impressions didn’t paint the full picture…who knows what connections we could be missing out on.

THE UTOPIAN POTENTIAL OF THE INTERNET

You’ve Got Mail is a film about the early days of the world wide web. It’s got the screeching dial-up sound that accompanies the opening credits, the image of New York City effectively booting up from a rudimentary 3D image to the real thing, the AOL aesthetic mediating Joe and Kathleen’s conversations, and the moral panic that Kathleen’s journalist boyfriend has about how the modernity of the internet is eroding the good things about society. So it’s interesting that the movie’s vision of the internet feels almost utopian. Now, decades later, we’re a lot more cynical about life online. Social media often feels bound up with inauthenticity, if not danger, and there’s wide understanding that what’s presented online doesn’t represent the full scope of who we really are. But in You’ve Got Mail, the web is the only place where Joe and Kathleen can expose exactly who they are — and become who they want to be.

“I like to start my notes to you as if we’re already in the middle of a conversation. I pretend that we’re the oldest and dearest friends.”

- Kathleen Kelly

A lot of this boils down to anonymity.

The correspondence becomes an important place for Joe to process and articulate that he often doesn’t like the person he’s behaving as. Likewise, it’s a place for Kathleen to express and understand her ongoing mourning process of her Mom, and discover who she is as an individual not just following her mom’s path. As the movie goes on, thanks to Joe, she learns to channel her more combative fighter instincts, but this also helps her verbalize more definitively what she stands for and why she doesn’t believe Joe’s mantra that business isn’t personal

All of this reflection and growth wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t felt that total freedom to express their honest thoughts to someone who was listening without judgment – all thanks to the internet.

WHY WE CAN FORGIVE JOE

Joe can be smug, cold and dishonest - and it’s blatantly unfair that the world often caters to his arrogant behavior while reacting hostilely to Kathleen’s earnest attempts to be nice.

But in his online confessionals, Joe reveals a level of self-awareness and self-criticism he won’t allow himself in the “real” life, where he thinks any vulnerability would come across as weakness. Just after he has an argument with Kathleen in person, he tells Shopgirl how badly he feels about how he acted: This unsparing self-reflection makes it easier to forgive him – because by confessing to Shopgirl that these are his worst instincts, he’s fighting against them.

Joe eventually realizes that the raw, honest person he can be with Kathleen online is his best self, and he takes steps to move toward becoming that person in his outer life. The moment when Joe makes that decision to abandon the cynical, ultra-realist side of him, and go for what he truly wants, comes in a conversation with his father, who’s facing yet another failed marriage. When Joe’s father says the easy part will be meeting someone new, Joe scoffs: This of course makes Joe think of Kathleen, but also spurs him to realize that what most people are settling for – and confusing with love or happiness – isn’t the real thing. And the authentic connection he has with Kathleen is that rare, once-in-a-lifetime joy that most people never get.

“…this woman is the most adorable creature I’ve ever been in contact with. If she turns out even to be as good-looking as a mailbox… ...l’d be crazy not to turn my life upside down and marry her.”

- Joe Fox

The ethics get murky after Joe doesn’t tell Kathleen he’s NY152 while cultivating their friendship, but that lie is part of an effort to nurture their online connection’s transition into an IRL bond. If he’d revealed the truth when Kathleen was still angry about the store and so deeply prejudiced against him, this would have killed the connection. And it’s Joe who makes their real-life friendship possible, pushing her beyond her dislike to show her how much fun they have hanging out together. Interestingly, near the end, he even challenges her to choose flesh-and-blood him over NY152. And while she’s tempted, it feels significant that she has to pick the inner love – the person she truly feels is her soulmate, representing her deepest self.

At this point, too, it’s as if she does sense on some level that the two men are the same, because when he reveals this to her she says: So this final union represents that both of them are at last merging their inner and outer selves.

OUTRO

Do the ends always justify the means? No – but Joe is remorseful in his letters, he does want what’s best for Shopgirl, and is clearly going through a crisis in trying not to become his father or his grandfather. So rather than dismissing him in anger, we can treat him with empathy – with the forgiveness we should offer to ourselves for all the ways we’re currently failing to manifest our secret, best selves. Ultimately Shopgirl and NY152 get the happy ending of realizing the people they can be, thanks to the help of someone else who truly sees them. And that’s the gift we should all be trying to give to ourselves.

“If only you could help.” “is it about love?”

- You‘ve Got Mail