The Time That an Entire Country Disapproved of Batman

Content Warning: The following article contains accounts of abuse.

The big picture

• when
  The Dark Knight
  was released, he found himself in an unexpected boost with the country of Turkey.
• Christopher Nolan directed the critically acclaimed superhero film.
• The film starred Christian Bale as the titular hero.

There are many reasons why countries ban movies, file lawsuits, and/or severely edit movies: religious reasons, moral reasons, extremely graphic scenes, and more. Even Greta Gerwig's barbie has been banned in Vietnam for a disputed line on a map in one scene. But nothing comes close to what happened Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and the country of Turkey. But if you can't remember a single thing that might be offensive to Turkey, that's not surprising. The truth is, there is nothing in The Dark Knight that is at all offensive to Turkey. That is, except for one thing: Batman. More specifically, the first name “Batman” that prompted the threat of a lawsuit Hüseyin Kalkanthe mayor of the Turkish city of… wait for it… Batman.

“The Dark Knight” came out at the right (wrong) time.

But before we look at the lawsuit, a little history. Batman is the name of a city, the capital of Batman District in Batman Province, Turkey, and is located near the Batman River. For centuries, it was known as Iluh, a small and modest Turkish village. The discovery of oil in the area in the 1940s turned Iluh into a boom town, and in 1957 Iluh became Batman, named after the nearby Batman River. How the river got its name is up for debate. In Turkey and Persia, a batman is a unit of measurement equivalent to 16.96 pounds, so this is the first possibility. The second and more likely explanation is that the river is named after Bati Raman, a nearby mountain, and that Batman is simply a shortened version of this. In other words, absolutely nothing to do with the comic book hero of the same name.

Regardless, when a columnist asked Mayor Kalkan in 2007, why didn't he seek legal action against the “Batman movie” or untold amounts of royalties, especially given the financial problems the city was struggling with at the time, he moved the mayor to the action “We thought this review was correct.” Mayor Kalkan was cited “and began to look into legal possibilities of such a case.” Guess which Batman movie came out shortly after the Mayor's investigation? There you have it: 2008 The Dark Knight. Kalkan told the Dogan news agency: “The royalty of the name 'Batman' belongs to us… There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us” . According to the same source, he then immediately sued Christopher Nolan for the copyright. Not Warner Bros., the producers of the film. Not DC Comics, which had long owned the Batman character as intellectual property. Nolan only (other sources claim WB was also mentioned).

If the story simply ended there, it would be another absurd demand, but the mayor suggested that the success of The Dark Knight it had a very negative psychological impact on the city's inhabitants. As a result, the film was blamed for a series of unsolved murders and a high rate of female suicides. It was a very disturbing and false allegation to lay at the feet of a Hollywood blockbuster. Also, murders and suicides plagued the city long before the movie was released. According to a 2006 report by the Child Rights International Network, young women whose only crimes ranged from looking at children to wearing a short skirt, being raped or, ironically, wanting to go to the movies, had been killed by their family in dishonor , usually his brother. If the family did not want to see their child persecuted, they forced the girls to take their own lives, locking them in a room for days with rat poison, a gun or a rope.

No lawsuit was ever filed against Christopher Nolan

Was this the act of a mayor who legitimately thought he had a case, or a smart political move to take the heat off his administration's mounting deaths? It's a moot point: No lawsuit was ever filed. Even if Mayor Kalkan had advanced, the odds were decidedly against him. Batman, the character created by Bob Kane i Bill Fingerdebuted in the pages of Detective comics in March 1939 years before Iluh changed his name, although Kalkan claims to have had evidence to prove that Batman City was founded first… evidence that has never seen the light of day.

Head of the Intellectual and Industrial Property Rights Commission of the Istanbul Bar, lawyer Vehbi Kahveci, told sources that the name “Batman” was registered worldwide, and if the city wanted to file a lawsuit for infringement of its name, it completely missed the deadline to do so. But they say any PR is good PR, and since Batman the city has hit the news with this story, people from all over the world have flocked to the city to take pictures with signs bearing the name “Batman” and an active request was launched. on change.org to change the border of Batman's province to resemble the iconic Batman logo (with nearly 27,000 signatures against a goal of 35,000).

But what if the lawsuit had gone ahead and Batman City had won? This would set a dangerous precedent. Volcano, Hawaii, could sue Tommy Lee Jones during the years 1997 volcano. The city of Ommen in the eastern Netherlands could have made a fortune suing the creators of the omen. Why stop there? Sandwich, Illinois, could sue delis from coast to coast. The town of Hell, Michigan could sue the Devil for a cut of their collected souls. The Newfoundland town of Dildo could sue… well, let's stop there. Fortunately, the Batman lawsuit didn't come to fruition after all, but there have been cases where lawsuits have been filed against movies, such as a Michigan lawsuit that saw a woman sue the film's distributors. movie Ryan Gosling movie To drive because it wasn't action-packed like the Fast and Furious movies, even though the advertising suggested it would be.

Funny, yes, but that lawsuit may have set a precedent for a recent successful lawsuit that saw two Ana de Armas fans are suing Universal Studios over the fact that the actress, despite being in the trailer for yesterday, did not actually appear in the film as his scenes were cut. This has opened the door for people to sue movie studios for misleading trailers. So who knows? Maybe the Caped Crusader will eventually go to court.

The Dark Knight is currently available to stream on Max in the US

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