Line #70 Main/BagsOfLetters


1	The protagonist is at a crucial turning point in their life and things are generally looking pretty grim. Rather suddenly, the character is surrounded with bags and bags of letters. While the letters are written by people who aren't even in the story, the sheer quantity of envelopes implies that they accurately represent public opinion, constitute valid legal arguments, or create some other opportunity for the character they are addressed to.
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3	Bags of Letters can be a [[SmokingGun Smoking Gun]]. If a few letters are read aloud, the bag will often turn out to be full of [[StronglyWordedLetter Strongly Worded Letters]]. But the important thing is quantity.
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5	Sometimes, for instance in ''Miracle on 34th Street'', the letters aren't even read or opened. Other times, for instance in ''Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' a character will read a few aloud and the audience is left to assume that all the letters sound like that.
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7	The mass of letters often appear on camera in literal bags although many movies use the trope to refer to letters offscreen or just show a pile of letters which were presumably in a bag at some earlier point.
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9	This trope is a form of DeusExMachina since most of the letters are written by characters who aren't even in the story. The effect is usually positive, but the letters can occasionally have a negative effect on the protagonist.
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11	Variations due to advancing technology include having someone rush into the room saying "The Switchboard is Lighting Up" where it's been established that the character is on live radio or television and is about to be kicked off the air when suddenly hundreds of people start calling in, as well as (briefly in the '90s and early '00s) a rapidly filling email inbox or InUniverse real-time reaction via social media such as Website/{{Facebook}}, Website/{{Twitter}}, [[WritingAroundTrademarks or the equivalent]].
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13	----
14	!!Examples:
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16	[[foldercontrol]]
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18	[[folder:Comic Books]]
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20	* In Barbara Slate's ''ComicBook/AngelLove'', Angel's roommate Wendy Thornball puts out a personal ad in the newspaper looking for a date. Angel comes into her apartment building to check her mail slot, and [[ExplodingCloset dozens of letters come pouring out of it]] for Wendy. Angel takes it all upstairs to her apartment and dumps them right on top of Wendy.
21	* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': Cassie gets bags full of fan mail for being ComicBook/WonderGirl that her friend Georgia helps her sort through.
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23	[[/folder]]
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25	[[folder:Fan Works]]
26	* ''Fanfic/RealityChecksNyxverse'': Partway through ''Nyx's Family'', a would-be assassin attacks Nyx and her grandparents (fortunately, his explosive device turns out to be a dud). Once the story hits the newspapers, there's a massive outpouring of support, and a ''huge'' pile of letters and packages for Nyx is delivered to the royal palace of the Crystal Empire. And that's just one day's worth, with even more arriving in the days afterward.
27	[[/folder]]
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29	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action ]]
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31	* In ''Film/SwingVote'', the drunken hick holding the future of the [[ArtisticLicenseLaw country in his hands]] receives a number of these that he is too lazy to check. As a result, [[InnocentProdigy his daughter]] does her best to answer them, just to make the people sending them feel that someone's listening. At the end of the movie, the aforementioned hick [[spoiler: uses the letters to question the politicians, thus cutting through the B.S. and getting their real opinions, as well as responsibly representing the American people.]]
32	* In ''Film/MiracleOnThirtyFourthStreet'', at the end of the famous courtroom scene, bags and bags of letters addressed to Santa Claus are brought into the courtroom until they are piled high enough to block out the judge. While the prosecutor argues a few letters delivered by the USPS don't constitute a valid legal defense, the judge decides the bags and bags of letters do constitute a valid legal argument.
33	* In ''Film/MrSmithGoesToWashington'', Mr. Smith expects his filibuster to sway public opinion in his favor, but he is presented with bags of letters that reveal public opinion has turned against him. The mass of letters almost makes Smith lose hope.
34	* In ''Film/TheUprightCitizensBrigade'', they lampoon this trope. A guy says there's a truck full of letters supporting his cause, but they're just random letters like bills and coupons. And he just insists that there's a whole truck outside. And he's accused of having stolen a mailtruck to support his cause.
35	* In ''Film/ItCouldHappenToYou'', after a journalist (who masqueraded as a homeless man, to see how they would react: despite the fact they were penniless, they helped him out) runs the story about this poor couple, thousands of people send in contributions and raise $600,000 for the couple to live happily ever after.
36	* The title of the movie ''Film/LettersFromIwoJima'' refers to a bag of letters from Japanese soldiers on the island that were never delivered to their families. Their discovery by modern day archeologists starts off the story.
37	* In ''Film/SleeplessInSeattle'', after announcing how hard it is dealing with the death of his wife, the protagonist receives thousands of letters from around the country and one of them is from the girl who he will eventually fall in love with.
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39	[[/folder]]
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41	[[folder:Literature]]
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43	* In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'', people Rita Skeeter attacks in her ''Daily Prophet'' articles, [[spoiler: such as Hagrid, Hermione and Harry himself]], tend to receive large amounts of hate mail. Although it's not shown, Dumbledore claims that he was also sent a lot of letters [[spoiler: vouching for Hagrid (from people who knew him from their school days)]]. This is reversed in the fifth book when Skeeter is blackmailed into conducting an unbiased interview with Harry (also an aversion of this trope, since the resulting letters vary from "You're a hero!" to "Seek professional help").
44	* In ''Adorkable'', when Jeane wants to give up her blog, believing that no one really cares about it, Michael makes her read some of the E-Mails she has received - loads and loads of E-Mails. [[spoiler: She changes her opinion.]]
45	* In ''Stormy, Misty's Foal,'' one of the sequels to ''Misty of Chincoteague'', the Beebes are amused to get bags of letters from school children offering name suggestions for Misty's foal. The family had to evacuate the island due to dangerous weather and the letters piled up in their absence. As one of the characters notes, it feels like they're holding an election.
46	[[/folder]]
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48	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
49	* ''Series/BetterCallSaul'': In "Coushatta," Kim's idea as to how to pressure DDA Ericsen into agreeing to a plea deal for Huell Babineaux, who's been arrested for assaulting a police officer with a bag of sandwiches. Jimmy takes a bus to Huell's hometown of Coushatta, Louisiana, getting other passengers on the bus to write letters of support for Huell from a predesignated script that paints Huell as a pillar of his community. Once Jimmy gets to Coushatta, he takes the letters to a post office to mail them to Judge Munsinger in the Albuquerque courthouse. Judge Munsinger is overwhelmed by the flood of letters and tells Ericsen and Kim to work out some plea deal so they don't have to deal with the (nonexistent) threat of a media circus coming into town.
50	* On ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'' when Sally said on national TV that she was looking for a man Bags Of Letters arrived overnight.
51	* On ''The Late Show with Creator/DavidLetterman'' the ViewerMail ThemeSong (borrowed from ''The Perry Como Show'') goes ''"Letters / We get letters / We get stacks and stacks of letters / LETTERS"''
52	* In the ''Series/HancocksHalfHour'' episode "The Bowmans" Hancock finds himself bombarded by mail the day after his radio SoapOpera character is killed off.
53	* In a sketch on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' the two biggest stars of South American music release a joint album while at the same time taking potshots at each other through song. In a duet to the tune of "Guantanamera" one singer claims he gets ''one ton of fan mail''. The other singer counters with the fact that he gets ''two tons of fanmail''. The first comes back by alleging that he gets ''four tons of fanmail''. It then devolves into claims of eye jobs and trouser stuffing.
54	* Variation: The original Bill Cullen edition of ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' utilized randomly selected postcards in five rotating drums for their home viewer sweepstakes. Whoever had the exact price first out of five selected cards (or the first closest to the price without going over) was the winner.
55	* Future tech example: In the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Virtuoso", ''Voyager'''s computer systems are all clogged with fan mail for The Doctor from the Qomar, a people to whom music was introduced for the first time by The Doctor with his performance on ''Voyager''.
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57	[[/folder]]
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59	[[folder:Music]]
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61	* In "Message in a Bottle" by Music/ThePolice, the message gets 100 billion replies.
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63	[[/folder]]
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65	[[folder:Radio]]
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67	* Frequently parodied in ''Radio/ImSorryIHaventAClue'', with lines like "I see from the small mountain in our in-tray that someone's sent us a scale model of Kilimanjaro" or (in August) "I see from the vast pile of envelopes in front of me that Christmas delivery is as good as ever", leading to the announcement that they've only received one letter, from a Mrs Trellis of North Wales.
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69	[[/folder]]
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71	[[folder:Theatre]]
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73	* At the end of ''Theatre/BothYourHouses'' a corrupt congressman's office is getting swamped with telegrams opposing a pork- and graft-laden appropriations bill.
74	* In ''The Solid Gold Cadillac'', Laura Partridge finally defeats the {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s by adding up letters from small shareholders granting her voting control over their stock.
75	* In ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar'', Cassius forges letters, pretending to be Roman citizens, to persuade Brutus to take action against Caesar for the good of Rome. Achieves the same effect as honestly written letters.
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77	[[/folder]]
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79	[[folder:Western Animation]]
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81	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
82	** When they own a racehorse, as he's being put out to stud, the horse gets Bags of Letters from prospective broodmares.
83	** When Homer files a lawsuit against a seafood restaurant whose definition of "all you can eat" differed from his, the defendant asked for a display of how much Homer ate that night. At that point parodying the film ''Film/MiracleOnThirtyFourthStreet'', a huge convoy of people carrying large sacks enter the court, but it turns out that they just contain letters for an adjacent courtroom (People of Springfield vs Santa Claus).
84	** In "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge", Marge protests against ''The Itchy & Scratchy Show'' and launches a mass letter-writing campaign to the studio. Pretty soon, Roger Meyers, Jr. has his desk completely covered in angry letters, with a line of mail trucks arriving at the gates and stretching into the horizon, which makes him reluctantly admit defeat.
85	--->'''Meyers:''' I don't believe this! ''(picks up a letter)'' "I will never watch your show, buy any of your products, [[BlackComedy or brake if I see you crossing the street]]." Wow, that's cold. ''(picks up another one)'' "Dear sleaze merchant..." Oh, come on, that hurts. Gentlemen, the screwballs have spoken.
86	* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'' special "Smurfily Ever After", Clumsy is given a ton of invites to deliver to the guests of Woody and Laconia's wedding, which are all dumped on top of him by Handy's crane. Clumsy gets the help of the Pussywillow Pixies to deliver the rest of the letters since they could fly.
87	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In the second half of the season 2 opener, Twilight's fallen under Discord's influence and is badly depressed. Princess Celestia promptly sends her back all the Friendship Reports she'd sent in over the course of the first season, and reading the pile of mail helps restore her resolve and true self, allowing her to go out and help her friends so they can beat Discord.
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89	[[/folder]]
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91	[[folder:Real Life]]
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93	* Celebrities will frequently refer to "bags of letters" talking about fan mail or viewer feedback.
94	* Creator/RobertEnglund got so much fan mail when he played Willy on ''Series/{{V 1983}}'' that they eventually started to use unopened fan letters as ''props'' in other programs. In his biography, he mentions seeing a studio tour where the guide pointed to a stuffed letterbox and said, "All of those are letters to Willy."
95	* Craig Shergold was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He made it known that he wished to break the world record for most postcards received before he died. He got better, and soon was up to his neck in cards.
96	* While she was working on ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', Creator/NichelleNichols was told by a couple of studio mailmen that she was receiving bags of fan mail, but that they were being dumped -- apparently for racial reasons. It got her so miffed that she wanted to leave the show and only Dr. UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr was able to talk her out of it.
97	* According to DJ Simon Dee of BuccaneerBroadcaster Radio Caroline, when the first tender arrived after the station's 1964 opening, what he thought were sacks of potatoes on its deck turned out to be sacks of mail.
98	* In 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru (Prime Minister of a then newly independent India) was presented with more than 800 letters from Tokyo schoolchildren, asking him to send, as one young girl put it, "a large, charming elephant" to Ueno Zoo, which had been without an elephant since 1943, when the zoo's three elephants were starved to death. [[note]]During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, staff at Ueno Zoo were ordered to kill all "dangerous" animals, including the elephants, to prevent them from getting loose if the zoo was bombed during an air raid. The elephants were starved after attempts to poison them proved unsuccessful. Other Japanese zoos followed suit and, by the end of the war, only three elephants, one of which died early in 1946, were left alive in the country.[[/note]] In response, Nehru sent an elephant named Indira after his daughter (who would go on to become Prime Minister of India herself) as a gift from the children of India to the children of Japan.
99	[[/folder]]

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