Cinematic Comanches: The Lone Ranger in the Media Borderlands by Dustin Tahmahkera (review)

Reviewed by: Cinematic Comanches: The Lone Ranger in the Media Borderlands by Dustin Tahmahkera José Antonio Lucero (bio) Cinematic Comanches: The Lone Ranger in the Media Borderlands by Dustin Tahmahkera University of Nebraska Press, 2022 WITH CINEMATIC COMANCHES: The Lone Ranger in the Media Borderlands, Dustin Tahmahkera (Comanche) offers a lively, theoretically engaged, and often humorous exploration of the intersections of Native studies, cinema and media studies, and Comanche history. Tahmahkera's book represents a cinema-centered version of Leanne Howe's (Choctaw) "tribalography," her influential term for the connective work that Native storytelling does in "integrating oral traditions, histories, and experiences into narratives and expanding our identities."1 Working across several genres, texts, and conversations, Tahmahkera offers an expansive consideration of the "media borderlands" that connect "real and reel Comanches" (xi). From the very first word of the text, marʉawe (a greeting in the Comanche language that can be rendered as "tell it"), the book centers Comanche perspectives. Such tribal specificity, however, does not keep the book from offering deep and broad lessons about Native representation relevant far beyond Comanchería: "As a method, marʉawe is a call to report on a media-centric borderlands of Comanche history as representation and of Comanche representation as history" (x). This borderlands account includes plenty of critique and investigations into what is playfully rendered in the Comanche language as isa kwitapʉ , or "bullshit" (xiii). As a history of Hollywood westerns that runs from The Searchers to The Lone Ranger, there is plenty of isa kwitapʉ, for sure. At the same time, that history is full of many moments of Comanche agency and kin-making that will make for many lively classroom conversations. Readers are invited into accessible and informed discussions about "representational jurisdiction" or "who represents whom" (chapter 1), a reconsideration of the casting of Johnny Depp in the role of Tonto as an extension of the history of Comanche captivity and kinship (chapter 2), an analysis of "cinematic justice and injustice" in Disney's The Lone Ranger (chapter 3), and finally a tribally specific discussion of Comanche viewing and criticism of the Disney film (chapter 4). Spoiler alert: The Lone Ranger is a site of meaningful Comanche action and also a story of missed opportunities. Importantly, this book is much more than a consideration of one film; it is also a conversation between the author and End Page 159 his ancestors and relatives like his great-great-great-grandmother Cynthia Ann Parker ("white-captive-turned Comanche"), great-great-grandfather Quanah Parker ("the last 'chief' of the Comanches"), and high-profile aun-ties like Juanita Pahdopopony and Ladonna Harris. Readers will want to bring some popcorn for the engaging ways that family history become film history, and vice versa. I appreciated (but some readers might take issue with) the way Tahmahkera avoids some of the debates in Comanche studies that have generated more heat than light. I am thinking specifically of the debates over the work of Finnish historian Pekka Hämäläinen and his use of "empire" as an analytic to understand Comanche and other Native peoples' territorial expansion. Tahmahkera uses "Comanche empire" unabashedly and without qualification. While I am curious what Tahmahkera thinks about the critiques of Hämäläinen lodged by historians like Ned Blackhawk and Nick Estes, I can also see how some of those debates have unintentionally centered the European historian more than the Native histories. The most controversial part of this Native history involves, of course, the adoption of actor Johnny Depp into the Comanche Nation by Ladonna Harris. While it is risky to bring Depp so centrally into the story, it remains one of Comanche agency and creativity. Harris suggested "with a grin" that "we made Depp a Comanche so he'd learn to act like one" (20). The jury is probably still out on how well that bet has paid off, especially since the defamation trials of Depp and his former partner Amanda Heard. At the same time, such complexities are reminders that not all relations are good and that kinship is not conflict-free. That said, while Depp's behavior should not detract from the book's arguments, one...