It Implants in Your Brain and It Tells You What to Do

There are several narrative threads running through Be More Chill. One is the Science Run Amok / World Domination story. The other is Jeremy's Hero Myth (and Faust story), following his journey to Growing Up. Interestingly, as we're watching Jeremy finally grow up, finally give up selfishness in favor of sacrifice, the same thing is happening with his father. Both of these characters have to stop wallowing in self-pity and instead put their loved ones' needs ahead of their own.

By the end of this story, we know both of them will be okay. They've both gained important enlightenment and both have found their paths. We hope. As our story opens, Jeremy and his dad are too comfortable in their current positions, and only a crisis will knock them out of complacency and into action.

And even though Michael seems as "stuck" as Jeremy, he's not. We come to realize over the course of the story that Michael is Jeremy's Wise Wizard figure (like Ben Kenobi or Glinda the Good Witch). In many (most?) Hero Myth stories, the Hero loses the Wise Wizard shortly after he sets out on his journey. Here the sci-fi angle of the story allows for a clever parallel; here the Squip literally blocks Jeremy's ability to see Michael, so Jeremy's Wise Wizard is taken from him -- by technology.

And it probably goes without saying that the Squip is the Evil Wizard in this story, seducing our hero to cross over to the Dark Side. And just as Darth Vader is largely machine, representing his lost humanity, in Be More Chill, the villain is pure technology, no humanity to lose. Jeremy Heere is close cousin to Anakin Skywalker, both crossing to the Dark Side, but for the Right Reasons.

Sort of.

Okay, not really.

It reminds me of my favorite bit of Star Wars dialogue. Anakin asks Palpatine, "Is it possible to learn this power?" Palpatine pauses dramatically, turns slowly to Anakin and says, "Not from a Jedi."

Anakin's Hero Myth is a tragic story because he does not learn the right lessons and he does not stay on his path. Jeremy has a happy ending because he does learn the right lessons, and he does find the right path for himself.

In many Hero Myths, the Hero has to go to the Underworld (think of the cave on Dagobah in Empire Strikes Back). Maybe in Be More Chill, the underworld is Jeremy's time under the influence of the Squip, maybe even more explicitly, the Halloween party. He has "died" to his former life of nerdiness -- and warmth and compassion, BTW -- and has become one of the (moral? intellectual?) dead. But Jeremy doesn't escape The Underworld just yet...

Their zombified Midsummer Night's Dream -- think about this, a romantic comedy about the walking dead -- also stands in as a great metaphor for the Underworld; and it's in that scene, backstage, that Jeremy finally escapes the Dark Side.

Even though we may not be consciously thinking about the Hero Myth parallels, we sense the Halloween party is a dark place, and Michael has come to "rescue" Jeremy, to bring him back to the world of the living, but Jeremy hasn't learned what he needs to learn yet.  And we sense, though maybe subconsciously, the various symbols and metaphors for death all over this story -- including Jeremy's metaphorically "dead" mother, who has left them.

The grief over this loss and all that comes from that is a central part of this growing-up story. Loss and death are part of life, Be More Chill is telling us; we lose people and we go on living. That's something we learn to do (or we don't), along with the million other lessons of becoming an adult. Jeremy and his dad both have to learn to let go of this pain. They both have to learn that other people don't make us happy; we do that (or don't) ourselves.

We choose.

Be More Chill is all about choices, bad ones and good ones, immature and mature ones. It's about the gazillion mistakes we all make along our clumsy way toward adulthood, only in this case, blown up to literally world-shattering proportions. After all, this is a Faust story -- what could be higher stakes than selling your soul to the (cyber-) devil?

Or world domination?

The show is so much fun, such a roller coaster ride, and the characters are so incredibly engaging, but this is a serious story. Like I argued in my first BMC post, this is a thriller. We don't realize it till we're smack in the middle of this adventure, but the show's title is a seduction -- Being More Chill sounds good, but giving up independent thought is bad (that's how we got Trump!). And in this case, giving up independent thought is how the Squip literally is going to take over the world.

Our story is a cautionary tale about surrendering your opinions or choices to others (whether in politics or religion or school), about the destructive potential of digital connectivity, about popping pharmaceuticals as an easy fix to complex problems, about bullying and peer pressure and other ways that humans inflict pain on other humans. We blame the Squip for the destruction, this soulless micro-computer, but somebody made that damn thing. Some human designed the Squip to do what it does. It's still humans hurting humans.

It seems that every theme in this story connects directly to 2019. I'd like to think that's part coincidence, and part not. I think artists, consciously or not, are always responding to the world around them, often before they even realize it themselves. The brilliant novelist Ned Vizzini created this story fifteen years ago. How'd he know what a pitch perfect metaphor his sci-fi story would be for the culture and politics of America in 2019?

He probably didn't, but I guess that's what great artists do. Lucky for us.

The adventure continues...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

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