The VD Blues

"This is my uterus! Private property!" huffs Actor James Coco. "Please," says Robert Drivas, playing the tired claim jumper. "I've been swimming up that cervix for hours." The scene is as bizarre--and funny--as it sounds, but the message is purely educational. For Coco is a gonorrhea bacillus, and Drivas, his rival, is syphilis. Their little one-acter is part of an unprecedentedly frank one-hour special about the dangers of venereal disease that will be aired by the Public Broadcasting System next week.

Titled VD Blues, the show, despite its grim message, is surprisingly entertaining. Host Dick Cavett provides his usual wry commentary--penicillin, he says, is the ideal gift for the "man who has everybody"--and Playwrights Israel Horovitz, who wrote the battle of the uterus, and Jules Feiffer find the subject ideal for their black humor.

Underwritten by the 3M Company (Scotch tape, etc.), which contributed $105,000 of the show's $140,000 cost, VD Blues is, in fact, as timely as anything that is likely to appear on TV this fall. Gonorrhea, which many people may believe was eliminated with the advent of penicillin, is epidemic in the U.S. today, and even more dangerous syphilis is not far behind. According to public health authorities, there were 700,000 cases of gonorrhea reported in the first six months of 1972, with many thousands more unreported.

The message, of course, is that both gonorrhea and syphilis can be cured by penicillin and other antibiotics if caught in time -- but that the crucial first step is to face the realities of the diseases and overcome inhibitions about reporting them.

VD Blues is outspoken even by the more liberal standards of public television. It does not shy away from such slang as "the clap" and "a dose," or from crisply clinical descriptions of genitalia. What is surprising -- and most commendable -- is that a major company would finance such a show, apparently realizing that even the controversy that arises from it can only be salutary.

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