Kathleen: I started helping my mother after school here when I was six years old. And I used to watch her. And it wasn’t that she was just selling books, it was that she was helping people become whoever it was (that) they were going to turn out to be. 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.
Joe: Working, at six? How enterprising of you. What did she pay you?
Kathleen: What? No, I was…I just liked helping out around the store.
Joe: Helping? You performed basic tasks that ensured the store’s continued profitability and existence?
Kathleen: Well. I guess it was working. In a sense.
Joe: For free. You were enslaved, then.
Kathleen: I wouldn’t put it like that, exactly…
Joe: Tell me, did you ask your mother to give birth to you?
Kathleen: Of course not.
Joe: Then whence your moral obligation to provide her with unpaid labor?
Kathleen: I…I suppose there isn’t.
Joe: On what grounds did she have the right to demand free work from you?
Kathleen: None. None.
Joe: Does it not follow that what is true for individuals is true for society? If parenthood is not a system for breeding servants, is civilization? Did you ask to be born into a society that demands financial and emotional support from the state?
Kathleen: No. No, I didn’t.
Joe: Then why – why, Kathleen – would you provide strangers with free goods, currency or services when you would not even provide them to your own mother?
Kathleen: I…I wouldn’t. The welfare state must be dismantled.
Joe: And for that matter, why is it that corporate profits are taxed first on a company-wide level, and then the shareholders of said corporations are also taxed after receiving profit distributions?
Kathleen: That sounds like double taxation to me.
Joe: Right again.
[They kiss.]
Frank: When you are finished with Fox Books, the Shop Around the Corner is going to be responsible for reversing the entire course of the Industrial Revolution. You are a lone reed waving in the breeze standing strong and tall in the corrupt sands of commerce.
Kathleen: All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy. There is nothing corrupt about commerce; corruption may exist in a less-than-free society, but commerce itself, the trader principle, is unassailably pure. If I trade something in exchange for that which I want, even if I feel I have been unfairly treated, have I not made the choice to give up what I must in order to acquire that which I desire? Was I not free in that moment? I may not have had the advantage, but still I was free.
Frank: I –
Kathleen: A businessman cannot force you to work for him or to accept the wages he offers; you are free to seek employment elsewhere and to accept a better offer, if you can find it. The Industrial Revolution is the greatest thing that ever happened to this earth and the men who stand firmly on it. Some day the sun will burn out, and men like you will burn with it, but the rest of us will ascend to orbit brighter stars.
Frank: I didn’t mean –
Kathleen: And reeds don’t even grow in the sand. They grow in marshes and wetlands. Yours is the vacant lot of the abandoned mind.
Christina: I went to the Fox Books Website and you can buy anything. Maybe we should get a website.
Kathleen: My mother would never have wanted us to have a website. “Every book you sell is a gift from your heart.” She always said that.
Christina: What if they put us out of business?
Kathleen: A good point. If those books really were a gift from the heart, why did we ask for money in exchange for them? A feeling is not a transaction.
Christina: You can order anything from that website. They ship it to you in a day.
Kathleen: Within every category of goods and services offered on a free market, it is the purveyor of the best product at the cheapest price who wins the greatest financial rewards in that field—not automatically nor immediately nor by fiat, but by virtue of the free market, which teaches every participant to look for the objective best within the category of his own competence, and penalizes those who act on irrational considerations.
Christina: I think we should hire a web d–
Kathleen: Also, my mother is dead; dead people cannot effectively manage bookstores. A website it is.
Joe: You know, sometimes I wonder…
Kathleen: What?
Joe: Well…if I hadn’t been Fox Books and you hadn’t been The Shop Around the Corner, and you and I had just, well, met…
Kathleen: I know.
Joe: Yeah. I would have asked for your number, and I wouldn’t have been able to wait twenty-four hours before calling you and saying, “Hey, how about…oh, how about some coffee or, you know, drinks or dinner or a movie…for as long as we both shall live?”
Kathleen: Joe…
Joe: And you and I would have never been at war. And the only thing we’d fight about would be which video to rent on a Saturday night.
Kathleen: Well, who fights about that?
Joe: Well, some people. Not us.
Kathleen: We would never.
Joe: If only.
Kathleen: I gotta go.
Joe: Well, let me ask you something. How can you forgive this guy for standing you up and not forgive me for this tiny little thing of…of putting you out of business?
Kathleen: Joe, competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. Competition, properly so-called, rests on the activity of separate, independent individuals owning and exchanging private property in the pursuit of their self-interest. It arises when two or more such individuals become rivals for the same trade.
Joe: Kathleen, what are you saying?
Kathleen: The freest market is the human heart.
[They kiss.]
Tags: ayn rand rewrites, movies, objectivism, philosophy, you’ve got mail
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I was driving home on Tuesday and a car swerved into my lane right in front of me without signaling.
They had a vanity plate that said “AYN RND.”
I screamed “ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME” all the way to my exit. It was just too perfect.
Signalling is a concession to those too weak to govern their own automotive destinies.
Is it my fault that you were in the lane that was rightfully mine, and that I like my unfettered individualism with an insouciant hint of lemon zest?
I’m anticipating the announcement of Mallory’s second book, Ayn Rand Does Popular Culture.
Kathleen: The freest market is the human heart.
Adding this to my OKCupid profile to see what happens.
Oh please please do that and then tell us all about it.
It’s been done. We shall see what happens…
I have not watched You’ve Got Mail, and now I fear I never shall because no film can possibly live up to this.
“Also, my mother is dead; dead people cannot effectively manage bookstores.” INDEED
I personally consider this a vast improvement over the actual movie, which is so cutesy it makes me want to hurl.
The actual movie is such naked praise to the power of corporations (from the fictional Fox Books to the actual AOL) to lead us to our best destinies that this feels like the truest possible interpretation of the film. (The original Shop around the Corner, 1940, does not address the benevolence of transnational corporations.)
I enjoyed You’ve Got Mail, until I watched it again after getting out of an emotionally abusive relationship, and it suddenly became a horror movie.
yeah, it’s always rubbed me the wrong way that the final breakdown of her resolve against dating him (for legit reasons! like ruining her livelihood and trying to break her worldview!) happens when he shows up while she’s feeling sick and tired and kind of addle-brained and he just ignores every one of her stated boundaries and does whatever he wants, and she lets him, due to the sick and tired and kind of addle-brained-ness.
that’s not fucking cute…it’s actually kind of gross. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmNmFpJM3qQ
For me, it’s how incredibly manipulative Joe is. He’s using both of his personas to carefully steer her towards falling in love with him, using the personal information she shares with him while unaware of his other persona. It’s just so gross.
“And reeds don’t even grow in the sand. They grow in marshes and wetlands. Yours is the vacant lot of the abandoned mind.”
Seriously, though, Frank was insufferable.
*screaming in joy*
As much as I love Kathleen in the original, watching her really stick Frank’s insufferable ideologies up his butt was the only scene missing from a delightful movie. Thank you for this.
My housemates once watched “You’ve Got Mail” three times in one weekend. I generally despise rom-coms, but I would watch this version every weekend.
I think we lived in the same house in parallel universes because my roommate used to watch this on a loop.
Is it infidelity if you fall for someone you’ve never met, via the internet? I think we all know the answer to that one MALLORY YOU HOMEWRECKER
YOU’VE GOT MAIL is actually the perfect Randian text since, like ATLAS SHRUGGED and its trains, it centers around a now obsolete form of business: the big chain bookstore.
Fox Books Files For Bankruptcy
This is one of the (myriad) delights of watching the remake of Sabrina (circa 1996). Harrison Ford usesa cell phone the size of a tissue box (with an antenna), a $1 billion-dollar merger is the biggest merger ever, and the “hottest technology in town” is an indestructible flat panel screen. It’s adorable.
This is one of the (myriad) delights of watching the remake of Sabrina (circa 1996). Harrison Ford uses a cell phone the size of a tissue box (with an antenna), a $1 billion-dollar merger is the biggest merger ever, and the “hottest technology in town” is an indestructible flat panel screen. It’s adorable.
not to mention Humphrey Bogart’s phone-in-his-car in the original Sabrina!
THANK YOU FOR POINTING OUT THAT INDIES NEED WEBSITES, NOT GHOSTS.
Or….. do they? (strokes chin)
They could take make another version of this movie using Twitter or tumblr and a small boutique app developer dealing with a Google like company coming into the market. Hollywood, “Money please!”
Does anyone else find Tom Hanks creepy and really unattractive, particularly in this movie but in all of his movies? There is something about him that creeps me out, even though I think he’s supposed to be really nice in person.
He’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. Like a full-body shudder of horror when he starts talking.
Weirdly, I like this version of Kathleen even more than the original. And I LOVE the original.
The actual movie is such naked praise to the power of corporations (from the fictional Fox Books to the actual AOL) to lead us to our best destinies that this feels like the truest possible interpretation of the film. (The original Shop around the Corner, 1940, does not address the benevolence of transnational corporations.)
My mom loves this movie, so I saw it a lot when I was a teenager…and then I hadn’t thought about it in years. I kinda like the idea of Kathleen and Joe being this upfront with each other, though!
I love this film and yes it is an overly cute film with not much sense but I love it. And this post is a classic. Thank you! (My favorite part Frank & Kathleen, pure gold)