Reeling Back

Acquitted yesterday (November 19) of all charges following his August, 2020 killing spree in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse has become an icon to America’s gun-crazed white supremacists. The fact that he’s getting away with murder can only deepen the social divide in the U.S. Sadly, the demented runt never had a chance. His very name doomed him to infamy. Those of his own generation — born January 3, 2003, he belongs to the millennium-straddling “Gen Z” — will recognize Rittenhouse as the evil secret society bent on world domination in the 2016-18 sci-fi TV series Timeless. Founded in 1778 by revolutionary-era polymath David Rittenhouse, it is the show’s big bad, with adherents that include time-travelling assassins. Baby Boomers are more likely to hear in the teen gunman’s name an echo of Kyle Onstott, the midcentury author of such “big bold novels” as Mandingo (1957) and Drum (1962). Not one to question his own white privilege, the Illinois-born Onstott drew upon the racialist attitudes of his day to create a “slavesploitation” genre, plantation porn set on a "human breeding farm" called Falconhurst in ante-bellum Alabama. The best-selling series grew to include 15 titles, and spawned two feature films for fans of bad taste and bare bosoms. The first was director Richard Fleischer’s 1975 adaptation of Mandingo.