53 pages • 1 hour read
Ned VizziniBe More Chill
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Ned Vizzini
Content Warning: This entry discusses death by suicide.
Vizzini was born in 1981 and grew up in New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, an elite college-preparatory public school with a highly competitive admissions process. His first book Teen Angst? Naaah… (2000) is a memoir of his experiences in high school and is based on columns that he published in New York newspapers. Be More Chill is Vizzini’s first novel, and it was also inspired by many of his adolescent experiences. His second novel, It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2006), is based upon the time that Vizzini spent in the hospital for clinical depression in an adult psychiatric facility in 2004. In both of Vizzini’s novels, teenage characters have mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, which Vizzini also experienced.
While his works treat the subject of teenage mental health seriously, the tone of his novels is largely comedic. He satirizes the absurdity of adolescence and the way that society treats people with mental health conditions. Vizzini died by suicide in 2013. Because much of his fiction was drawn from his own life, authors who knew him remarked that his prose often mirrored his speaking voice. Fellow young adult author David Levithan writes in the afterward of Be More Chill, “Ned’s books talk like Ned talked.” The conversational style of Be More Chill and its frequent references to popular culture of the early 2000s are products of Vizzini’s cultural upbringing and his own teenage experiences.
Social Context: Coming-of-Age Narratives
Be More Chill follows the formula of a coming-of-age narrative, sometimes called a Bildungsroman. Coming-of-age stories typically feature a teenage protagonist developing psychologically and socially from youth to adulthood, and they are generally structured around the protagonist’s achieving cultural milestones such as graduating from school or having a first kiss. Young adult coming-of-age stories were particularly popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and Be More Chill consciously borrows or subverts the tropes that are common to this genre. Notable works of film and television such as Clueless (1995), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000), and Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003) all feature characters who attend high school. These stories emphasize the glamour of teenage romances, the drama of breakups, and the difficulty of maintaining a good reputation while navigating cliques. Be More Chill includes many of the typical plot points of this genre: a first kiss, a house party, and a dramatic confession of love.
However, Be More Chill also subverts or parodies elements of the coming-of-age genre, showing how unglamorous and silly many aspects of growing up can be. Jeremy Heere’s first kiss and his first sexual experience are awkward, rather than magical; his dramatic love confession to Christine Caniglia goes terribly wrong, rather than resulting in a happy ending. Be More Chill follows the structure of the genre and focuses on similar milestones to other popular works of its era, but it attempts to portray high school more realistically, as awkward rather than glamorous.
Literary Context: Musical Adaptation
In 2015, a musical adaptation of Be More Chill with music and lyrics by Joe Iconis premiered in a regional theater and made its way to Broadway in 2019. While it received mixed critical reviews, it found a strong online audience, and the cast recording became popular on streaming services. Notably, the musical adaptation changes many aspects of the novel’s plot, particularly regarding the SQUIP. In the novel, the SQUIP simply provides Jeremy with bad romantic advice, which causes him to get rid of it. However, the musical turns the SQUIP into a villain that seeks to spread itself to the entire school and, eventually, the entire world. In the novel, the SQUIP often insults Jeremy, but the SQUIP in the musical adaptation is portrayed as psychologically tormenting him and constantly reminding him of his need for it. The ending of the musical is no longer about Jeremy’s failed love confession. Instead, it features the SQUIP using the school play as an opportunity to infect the entire student body with SQUIPs.
These changes may reflect the fact that the emergence of new technology seemed neutral in 2004, although there were possibilities for its misuse. However, by 2015, the prevalence of social media bullying, algorithmic bias, and the addictive pressure to be up-to-date on online culture created more doubts and anxieties about the role that technology would play in teenage socialization. The musical adaptation gives Michael Mell a more prominent role in the story, exploring his feelings after Jeremy rejects him when he gets a SQUIP. This, alongside the unambiguously happy ending in which Jeremy and Christine begin dating, makes the musical adaptation a more conventional coming-of-age story than its source material.
