You'Ve Got Mail: Love in the Modern World

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You’ve Got Mail: Love in the Modern World When following the story of Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly in Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, viewers are drawn in by the lovable characters, played by an excellent Tom Hanks and a phenomenal Meg Ryan. Set in the turn of the millennia, right in the bustle of New York City at the rise of the Age of Information as it’s come to be informally known, You’ve Got Mail focuses primarily on how we manage to find love in the modern world, with a backdrop of corporate America to convey a different idea altogether. However, the viewer quickly picks up on the binding aspect, the glue that allows for the story of two unknowing lovers: the internet. The presence of the internet and computers in general begins at the very beginning of the film, with the opening credits taking on a virtual cityscape composed on a computer’s desktop. And from there it does not cease, as the leading couple are introduced in a comedic manner: stealthily signing on to America Online to make correspondence with one another, despite that they have never physically met. It is explained that Joe and Kathleen, known to one another by their chat handles NY152 and Shopgirl, connected in an online chat room. Only in the modern world could this sort of happenstance encounter occur. Before the turn to modernity, there were no means of making random, unknown friends through a no-strings-attached sort of faceless interface. Does this compel us to believe that the physical attraction stage of a relationship is extinct in the modern day? Joe seemed to believe so, as when confiding to his business partner outside the coffee shop, he swears that he’d be insane to not wish to marry the woman no matter what her physical qualities ended up being. The most senseless of blind dates: falling in love with another person without ever hearing or seeing them. Does this tell us that

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