Narrative fiction, at least in the western tradition, pretty much bakes into the cake the idea that the underdog is supposed to win. There is little dramatic tension is the protagonist gas significant material advantage in their quest that assist them in overcoming the hurdles between them and their goal. The more overmatched the protagonist is the more we thrill to their eventual victory. (Excepting, of course, tragedies and the literature that descends from that tradition.)

This expectation that the underdog emerges victorious is even more pronounced in American fiction. American mythology’s foundation of rugged colonialists making a new nation against the backdrop of hostile natives, starvation, and overcoming the most powerful empire on the planet to win their freedom, all conspire to make us the most rebel loving people in the world.

This cultural background is the reason I suspect that 1998’s romantic comedy You’ve Got Mailis one of the least loved films staring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. There are spoilers in the essay.

Based on a play that was later made into an earlier film The Shop Around the Corner, Mail, is about two business rivals locked in a fierce and unequal contest that unwittingly have been falling for each other by way of anonymous chats and emails. Ryan, playing Kathleen, is the owner of a beloved local bookstore and Hanks, as Joe, runs a massive bookstore chain very much like a fictionalized Barnes & Noble. Hanks and Ryan have a tremendous on-screen chemistry and the pairing off of these two actors has yielded a number of beloved films including Joe versus the Volcanoand Sleepless in Seattle, but ask people about this movie and you’ll often get a fairly negative response. As in most romantic comedies by the end of You’ve Got Mail the destined pair are a couple, having overcome all the obstacles that attempted to bar their love, one of which was the capitalist competition between their businesses. That ended with the bankruptcy of the beloved little bookstore. The underdog lost. Pluck, heart, and fierceness did not carry the day, no amount of spirit could overcome the massive economies of scale that advantaged Jo’s chain over Kathleen’s store, It wasn’t personal, it was business and he crushed her, a plot turn that I think very few could forgive and certainly never forget. (Though of course if you extend the story forward Joe’s business, Fox Books, eventually gets crushed by the on-line retailer Amazon.com because the wheel always turns.)

You’ve Got Mailis one of my favorite romantic-comedies and one I often re-watch, but I can understand why so many people have a visceral unease about the movie, it violates in a non-tragedy plot, what we have always come to believe is the only just outcome, the Underdog wins.