Elfman and Batman

Danny Elfman's score to the 1989 Batman was something of an icon for my brother and I growing up. My mother saw the film in the theatre, hated it, and forbade us to see it. (We eventually rented it while she was on vacation.) Just now, as a sit here listening to the score on CD, it all seems very clear to me. As an adolescent, I exulted in the heady, percussive score with its grand, romantic sweeps, its surging, almost p hallic themes for brass; there was something elemental and dionysiac about Elfman's music.

Or maybe I've become what Cynthia Nixon's character calls a "dimestore Camila Paglia."