1980s L.A. parents became a symbol for spoiling children. Were they really monsters?

High on coke, the blond beauty of a certain age cradles an Oscar statuette and addresses the academy from the mirrored dressing room of her Beverly Hills estate. It’s a fantasy acceptance speech she will never give in real life.

Her words are not of gratitude but resentment, bile and narcissism. And she saves the cruelest treatment for her own offspring, a glamorous, popular coed at L.A.’s most elite private high school.

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“To my daughter watching tonight, you are the disappointment of my life,” she says with satisfaction.

Welcome to the early 1980s of Bret Easton Ellis, the novelist who over three decades has left an indelible mark on the way we think about our most privileged hillsides and canyons.

TV viewers are getting a taste of his twisted take on the era — including that dark fantasy acceptance speech — this summer with the FX series “The Shards,” which is based on an Ellis novel and follows a group of rich high school friends through a maze of sex, drugs, dancing and murder.

The film version of "Less Than Zero"

The John Lautner Silvertop home is featured in “Less Than Zero.” Pictured are Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz.

(John Clifford / 20th Century Fox)

The hidden monster

“The Shards” features a sadistic serial killer. But the most terrifying characters are the broken, vain, selfish parents who in one way or another cause their children so much harm.

Was 1980s L.A. parenting really that bad?

It’s easy to look back with scorn, especially in this era of tiger moms, helicopter parenting and GPS tracking.

But there is such a thing as being too involved. A few years ago, L.A.’s elite private schools were rocked by the college admissions scandal, in which wealthy parents were accused of paying to get their kids into the elite university of their choice.

The indictment in those cases rivals anything Ellis dreamed up, including that early morning in 2019 when the FBI raided some of L.A.’s fanciest addresses, arresting socialites, actors and business titans.

Capturing a culture of excess

Ellis burst on the scene at age 21 with “Less than Zero,” a 1985 novel about a different set of friends navigating elite L.A. circles. It sparked endless think pieces about spoiled kids, checked-out parents and a toxic culture of materialism.

Ellis famously declared the parents in the novel so “hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children.”

“The Shards” continues this theme. In his review of this show, my colleague Robert Lloyd notes “adults are almost entirely missing, and when they are not, they are disappointing, or trouble.” It’s like a horror movie where the monsters are hidden to build suspense.

The issue of wayward youths and neglectful parents in L.A.’s tony neighborhoods was a topic of much discussion in the 1980s, and not just because of “Less Than Zero.”

Reality bites

Pacific Palisades became a national symbol of rich kids out of control after a series of deaths that hit the neighborhood in 1988. “60 Minutes” and “20/20” did exposés, with a focus on parents who let their kids do whatever they wanted.

But look deeper into those times and you’ll see the parents by and large do not come off as villains. The adults in Pacific Palisades organized to offer more youth services and set healthier boundaries.

In Beverly Hills around this time, parents created late-night gatherings for high schoolers that did not involve alcohol as an alternative to the illicit ragers. They also called out the adults who set a bad example.

“A parent bragged about his enterprising son who made $800 selling drinks at a party. I told him he was crazy,” a Beverly Hills PTA president told The Times.

Three years after “Less Than Zero” was published, a nonfiction telling of the Beverly Hills teen scene hit bookstores. “Hard Lessons” by Michael Leahy focused on a year in the life of the senior class at Beverly Hills High School.

The book had its share of wild parties, conspicuous consumption and drunken abandon. But it offered a much more nuanced look at family life. One student told Leahy that the problem wasn’t decadence but an obsession with achievement and perfection. “If you feel average, you feel like a loser,” she said.

The front of Beverly Hills High School

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

An ‘80s thing that never goes out of style

The Times review of “Hard Lessons” noted the real aesthetic of the high school was upward mobility: It’s “full of pressure to get into the right college, which will lead to the important job, which will lead to the serious bucks.” It was a value shared by both parents and their children.

Behind all the excess, the teens of “The Shards” also feels ambitious, believing their elevated station made big success — like becoming Tom Cruise’s co-star or emerging as the next Joan Didion — a requirement.

It that way, how much has really changed since the 1980s?

1980s L.A. parents became a symbol for spoiling children. Were they really monsters?

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