I am kind of ashamed to bring this anecdote in a comment to such a high brow article, but it should be noted that "Ode to Joy" was the villain's song in the fir

I am kind of ashamed to bring this anecdote in a comment to such a high brow article, but it should be noted that "Ode to Joy" was the villain's song in the first "Die Hard" movie. It's played when the bad guys finally open the vault. The chief villain, Hans Gruber, is himself, of course, German and has received "a classical education". (The director, McTiernan, had noticed the use of Ode to Joy in A Clockwork Orange and was a big fan of all things Kubrick's). Using that music for the villain also plays beautifully in building some moral ambiguity; it can be argued that Gruber is in fact the protagonist, trying to achieve something (and succeeding, when the vault opens), while John McClane, who doesn't want anything and isn't even happy to be there, is the antagonist. But then in subsequent movies, the Ode to Joy somehow becomes the good guy's song, which is super weird because McClane is anything but German, or classically educated, or... educated.