35 Years On: Batmania 1989

Thirty-five years ago, I was a relatively newly-minted teenager when the pop culture event of my young lifetime happened: Tim Burton’s Batman opened in theaters in June of 1989. My world, and the world, were never quite the same again. To say, “You had to be there” sounds cliched and condescending, but it’s absolutely true. To be there, as the whole world seemed to catch Bat fever overnight, was one of the most memorable monoculture moments, from a bygone era when monoculture moments weren’t as rare as they are today. But Batmania was special. It seemed to permeate every facet of that summer, in a way few movies ever have. Barbie (2023) came close recently, but the internet era has diluted the sense of everyone, all at once, being part of one big thing. That’s the way it felt in 1989.

I wrote a detailed piece about Batmania back on its thirtieth anniversary, and you can check it out here. For the thirty-fifth, I’ll add that the farther away from that shared cultural moment we get, the more the world feels to be splintering and falling apart. I know, rose colored glasses, the grass was definitely not always greener, and all that, but it’s still a feeling I can’t shake whenever I think about Batman ‘89 and how fun and magical it was to be in on the ground floor for something so big, which so thoroughly captured the zeitgeist of that era.

As for the film itself, I loved it then, even if I spent a lot of time comparing it unfavorably to the Batman comics I loved and had spent all of the ‘80s obsessively reading. Today, it’s a total blast. I love Burton’s dark, gothic vibe even more now than I did then—likely because I’ve come to really love dark, gothic vibes of any kind. While I didn’t particularly love Jack Nicholson’s take on the Joker, I’ve grown to like the performance more. Michael Keaton was then and is still my Batman—and I say that as someone who grew up loving Adam West’s Batman first. Keaton was already a favorite actor of mine before Batman. The man rules, and his take on Bruce Wayne is fascinating—a weirdo loner with a dark sense of humor, and an obsessive need to dress as a bat and strike from the shadows. I think Keaton is phenomenal in both of the Burton Batman films—and we all know Batman Returns is my personal favorite.

Kim Basinger absolutely blew my socks off as Vicki Vale (believe me, many a viewer wanted that statement to be literal in 1989). Speaking of, um, blowing—what a segue—I’m amazed looking back now at how some of the movie is a bit risqué (one of my mother’s favorite words for stuff I shouldn’t have been watching). Remember in the final act when Vicki attempts to distract the Joker so Batman can surprise the arch villain? Well, she does it by pretending to moan in orgasmic ecstasy, then sinking to her knees to go down on the Clown Prince of Crime, just as Batman enters the scene to save the day. Heyo!

Then there was the video for Prince’s “Batdance”, which was a phantasmagoric sexstactular masterpiece to my young eyes and ears. Prince applied his trademark brand of purple-tinged titillation to Batmania and the results were deliriously horny. He also looked spectacular in his sexy, half-Batman, half-Joker getup in the video. And then there’s the gyrating Vicki Vales—yes, multiple Vickis. I didn’t know I needed a dance troupe full of micro-miniskirt-wearing Vicki Vales in my life, but Prince knew I did, and boy did he deliver it.

There’s so much more I could write about that particular moment in pop culture history, but I covered a lot of that already in the Retro Network article. For now, I’ll just add this: Batmania ‘89 was real, and I’m glad I was alive to soak it all in.