When Bret Easton Ellis announced he was doing another book, my curiosity was piqued. That was back in the earlier part of the decade. COVID-19 was rampaging through the world and any kind of entertainment you could enjoy at home was a blessing. By the time his book, The Shards was released in January of 2023, the world was normalizing. That didn’t stop me from wanting to dive into the world that Ellis had written about. I hadn’t experienced the audio narrations that led to the novel. Maybe I should have. It would have saved me from reading one of the worst pieces of fiction I’ve ever read. So of course it got picked up to be a series with Ryan Murphy at the helm. Now that the series is out on FX, he’s talking about what went into making it. Thanks, we still hate it.
More Like, “The Sharts”
To be totally fair, I haven’t watched The Shards to judge how the show is. I would imagine it has to be better than the book. You’d have to really strive to make something worse than that dreck. There’s a reason why I refer to the novel as “The Sharts” instead. You can read more about that in our previous article. Part of the issue is how it reads like bad fan fiction. Ellis writes the story as if it’s autobiographical. He’s basically recounting the fictional events of a fictionalized version of himself in his final year in high school. And the real life Bret is absolutely obsessed with fictional Bret masturbating and having sex with anything that moves.
This all takes place while there’s a serial killer out and about, a weird cult, a new kid in school, and rich kids living their privileged lives. Yet somehow, the interesting elements of the cult and serial killer take a major backseat to the rich white kids and Bret’s horniness. But hey, at least with a cable television drama, they can’t really show all that sex, right? That has to improve on things to some degree. Even Murphy himself states, “The sexual content is certainly there, but it’s tasteful. I would watch the show with my teenager. It certainly will launch discussions. We were all conscious of that.” I’m wondering if the discussions will be able the gay male sex. There’s a lot of it in the book but it’s not something we see a lot of on cable.
LGBT Connections for Murphy
The LGBT element of it is something that speaks to Murphy, who is openly gay himself. The show is set in 1981 which resonated with him pretty deeply. “But the subtext of that year, for me, was ingrained in the writing because, like I told you, I had my first sexual experience in February of 1981, and then three or four months later was the New York Times story about how there’s a new, mysterious disease killing gay men.” The book didn’t have any of that subtext that I could pick up but Murphy’s personal connection could change that for the series.
It’s kind of funny how the casting of certain characters echoes the rich white kid quality of the novel. The Shards sees Kaia Gerber as Susan and Homer Gere as Robert Mallory. Gerber is the daughter of Cindy Crawford and Gere is the son of Richard Gere. That’s not to say they’re miscast or shouldn’t be in the roles they have. It just takes the concept of privileged teenagers in the novel to another meta level. Both actors are in their mid 20s though, so it’s not actually rich, white, teens playing rich, white, teens. Murphy admits that he was aware the casting would get some news attention. Not sure if he thought it would be because of the “nepo baby” casting element though, or the life mirroring fiction.
What do you Mean Three Seasons of This Shart?!
The true nightmare at play here though is that Murphy is intending for this show to last at least three seasons. He confirmed in an interview that he and Ellis talked about it being a multi-season show. This means there’s going to be some changes to the book, including new characters. As Murphy stated, “Also, when you’re creating a show that hopefully goes three or four years, you have to add new characters that are in the tone of the book, and we added a couple of those.” Maybe they’ll be more interesting than the ones already there. Guess it depends on how much masturbating they do. Probably not more than Bret, he spends most of the book doing that. Probably can’t show much of that on FX either.
If I sound overly negative about The Shards, it’s intentional. The novel was just that awful and it completely wasted its premise in a disjointed narrative. At times it tried to be too cerebral for its own good while also being excessively erotic. There’s nothing wrong with flagrant sexuality, especially when its a part of teenage experimentation and growing up. It’s a realistic part of the experience of adolescence. It’s more problematic when it feels like the author is self-glorifying himself and it does nothing for the story.
Ellis’ Weakest Work
Maybe the worst part of it though is how it compares to Ellis’ other work. The author’s previous novels have been extremely sharp critiques of ’80s culture. The commercialism, the false fronts, people being self-obsessed; he’s nailed that so well in past endeavors. But here, there’s nothing close to that. If anything, it feels like he’s glorifying these teens, or at the very least, himself. Bret seems like the coolest dude ever with his car, cool music, and constant sexual escapades. Yet we have absolutely no reason to care about Bret at all. Why are we bothering to follow what happens to him? What qualities does he actually have that make us want to be around him? None. The serial killer’s more interesting but we don’t get much of that because Bret’s too busy jacking off.
Hey, maybe you’ll find something more to enjoy in The Shards though. The series is on FX and being streamed on Hulu as well. If Ryan Murphy can take something of this and make it better, then more power to him. He may be a God amongst men if the makes that possible. For me though, I’d rather have a continuing case of “The Sharts” than experience The Shards ever again.
