Living Well at the End of Western Civilization

Nora Ephron’s ‘You’ve Got Mail’ explored the dawn of the internet age with a counterrevolutionary bent.

Nora Ephron’s delightful You’ve Got Mail is funny without being vulgar, charming without being maudlin, and gentle but full of real joy. But the romantic comedy also contains a certain philosophic depth that may have been lost on viewers upon the film’s release in December of 1998, one worth revisiting 25 years later.

Starring Meg Ryan as bookseller Kathleen Kelly and Tom Hanks as businessman Joe Fox, the opening line of You’ve Got Mail asserts that the internet could lead to “the end of Western civilization as we know it.” Technological and economic change are wreaking havoc in late-’90s New York City. Beneath the surface of Kathleen and Joe’s romance is an earnest attempt to reckon with what it means to live a good life in the midst of such technological upheaval. 

In this way, You’ve Got Mail reminded me of another great work celebrating an anniversary this year: Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences. Originally published 75 years ago in 1948, the book is considered one of the founding texts of the American intellectual conservative movement. And like You’ve Got Mail, Weaver also opens with a half-joking line: “This is another book about the dissolution of the West.”

Read more at The Dispatch.