Cannupa Hanska Luger revealed on Instagram on Tuesday that he collaborated with the filmmakers behind the movie Him to create “Tinsel Larry,” a sports mascot featured in the film.
Him is a new horror film directed by Justin Tipping and produced by horror auteur Jordan Peele. Featuring Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, and Tim Heidecker, the film follows a rising football player who joins his idol, an aging star quarterback, at an isolated training compound. It quickly goes off the rails, however, with increasingly strange and violent incidents that interrogate the relationship between football and violence, as well as the fleeting and intoxicating nature of fame—particularly for Black athletes.
Luger’s “Tinsel Larry,” created with lead costume designer Dominique Dawson, appears as the mascot for the fictional San Antonio Saviors team. Dawson told film website Bloody Disgusting that the mascot began as “Conquistador Larry,” a “gluttonous, pillaging, warrior character” that evolved into “Tinsel Larry,” a “razzle-dazzle rose gold glitter monster.”
The mascot contains Indigenous references, which Luger explained in an Instagram statement that he saw as a way to “look back” at the racist history of sports mascots.
“For generations, mascots have distorted and commodified Indigenous identities—turning living cultures into caricatures for the comfort of others,” Luger said of the project. “To build one knowingly, within the language of horror cinema, became an act of reclamation—an inversion of the symbol. What was once used to erase us becomes a vessel to expose that erasure. The horror looks back.”
Luger is no stranger to creating unusual costumes or working in the language of film, though his practice typically leans toward Indigenous futurism. His ongoing project Future Ancestral Technologies imagines possible Indigenous futures through short films populated with Indigenous characters dressed in elaborate, futuristic costumes designed by Luger.
Last year, for the Hammer Museum’s exhibition “Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice,” Luger created Sovereign, a site-specific sculptural, video, and audio installation featuring three Indigenous space travelers wearing “sovereignty suits” that nod to 1950s Hollywood science-fiction tropes.
While Luger’s “Tinsel Larry” is meant as a nod to racist mascots of the past, it’s hardly an exaggeration. The since-retired mascot of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians (née Indians) was “Chief Wahoo,” a red-faced caricature with a giant grin and a feather tucked into a headband.
The Indians’ team name, along with the Washington Redskins’—now the Commanders—were retired in recent years following public backlash. Notably, the Atlanta Braves, whose logo features a tomahawk and whose fans famously perform the “tomahawk chop” during high-intensity moments, have kept their branding. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in 2021 that the Braves were allowed to retain their name and imagery due to a longstanding partnership with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and other local Georgia Indigenous communities.
