Mail

“You’ve Got Mail”- While they developed their online profiles, the profiles were similar to their real life lives only missing some of the more important information that would have given themselves away. She shared that she owned a business as the business was beginning to experience problems with the competition, but as he offered help as a businessperson, she would not share additional information it was against the rules they had decided on in the beginning. With that, he avoided opening up any further, by doing this reinforced the trust that was developing between the two and allowed their online relationship to grow. At the sametime, the two were developing an adversarial position toward each other as business people. He is the ‘big box” retailer coming to town to take the lion share of the market, she is the small business owner about to devoured by the lion. This same conflict happens consistently in our society today- Home Depot-Family Hardware Store, Wal-Mart and all the local merchants, and WINCO and the neighborhood grocer. As the adversarial positions begin to develop, he discovers who his email companion is. He begins to make suttle changes in his emails. Offering little clues to his identity; hoping for discovery. Would a relationship like this develop into a romantic relationship in the “real world” most likely not, the adversarial relation ship is too strong to overcome, one person has destroyed the life and well-being of the other. More than likely in today’s world the new comer would acquire the smaller specialized business. Then incorporate the owner into the business this would help to bring additional business to the larger company. A business relationship would be more likely to develop than a romantic relationship.
It was interesting to see the difference in the technology between now and then, and even the difference within the story. Between now and then we see both of them using the same provider “AOL” the company that started it all and it was a dial up connection. This forced the communication to take place away from work, and usually in the evening when their original partners had left or gone to bed. This twist added a bit of being naughty to the story. If you look at the technology within the movie- she is underdog being the small businessperson, she works on a desktop computer. While he is portraying the modern “big business”, man works on the high tech notebook computer. The story is ok, it is designed to leave you with a good feeling, it was a little slow and while the title implied email communication would be the main topic, it was a tool used to pull you into a romantic movie. Could you do the same movie today with the current technology- yes unless you included digital photography and web cams?

Advertisement