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RE: The legend of the Black Clap...
Posted on: February 28, 2020 at 17:02:22 CT
JeffB MU
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http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Scholarly/Baky_White_Cong_01.html
Since this paper is intended only as notes toward eventual systematic research, let us set aside these six sets of related tales and focus instead on just the four that I have seen ensnare researchers more often than the rest. Any scholar wishing to interrogate the origin and motives of these legends must take into account some of the following:
1. In the case of the "Black Clap," the shard of fact that must be present in order to qualify the tale as a true legend happens to be fairly easy to verify. Venereal disease was as common in Vietnam as in other wars. The difference, apparently, was the availability of broad-spectrum antibiotics. These multivalent drugs were used prophylactically by well-meaning Corpsmen in the ill-advised belief that they could prevent their buddies from passing on VD (particularly gonorrhea) to their stateside families simply by giving them one massive dose a day or two before the GI left Vietnam for home. Such injections of conscience proved ironically vengeful. Physicians specializing in infectious disease have long recognized the ability of disease agents to become virulently resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics if the antibiotics are administered in doses that allow the disease agent to build up a tolerance to the drug. That is exactly what happened; and after about 1970, select Asian strains of VD were extremely difficult to cure even when treated in isolation back in U.S. medical facilities. However, that certain of these languishing GIs were spirited away to an island to die alone and unmourned is a part of the legend that is lost in a cloud of tense anxiety. Still, it is not hard to imagine the degree of redemptive angst that might build up in the psyche of a nineteen-year old GI returning home to a nation that suggested to him that he was guilty just for being where he was in the first place. If he bought into such inventive shame it would seem quite fitting-- even logical--that a young man as morally infected as he obviously was would not only be incurable, but be made to suffer such vengeful horror in a jail-like setting in an alien nation. Keeping that in mind, we can then also envision another fairly late variant of this disease legend, the novel Meditations in Green written in 1983 by Stephen Wright witnesses that,
The privates were arguing about whose turn it was to have Number Three, apparently a girl of incredibly nimble fingers. Finally they decided to let her choose. Then they congratulated themselves on the easy availability of certified and inspected Grade A prime instead of village leftovers who all carried the Black Syph for which there was no known cure except an indefinite confinement in a military hospital on Okinawa until a treatment could be found and who were all VC sympathizer anyway with razor blades concealed up their snatches to mutilate imperialist *****s. (p. 123)
Since this paper is intended only as notes toward eventual systematic research, let us set aside these six sets of related tales and focus instead on just the four that I have seen ensnare researchers more often than the rest. Any scholar wishing to interrogate the origin and motives of these legends must take into account some of the following:
1. In the case of the "Black Clap," the shard of fact that must be present in order to qualify the tale as a true legend happens to be fairly easy to verify. Venereal disease was as common in Vietnam as in other wars. The difference, apparently, was the availability of broad-spectrum antibiotics. These multivalent drugs were used prophylactically by well-meaning Corpsmen in the ill-advised belief that they could prevent their buddies from passing on VD (particularly gonorrhea) to their stateside families simply by giving them one massive dose a day or two before the GI left Vietnam for home. Such injections of conscience proved ironically vengeful. Physicians specializing in infectious disease have long recognized the ability of disease agents to become virulently resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics if the antibiotics are administered in doses that allow the disease agent to build up a tolerance to the drug. That is exactly what happened; and after about 1970, select Asian strains of VD were extremely difficult to cure even when treated in isolation back in U.S. medical facilities. However, that certain of these languishing GIs were spirited away to an island to die alone and unmourned is a part of the legend that is lost in a cloud of tense anxiety. Still, it is not hard to imagine the degree of redemptive angst that might build up in the psyche of a nineteen-year old GI returning home to a nation that suggested to him that he was guilty just for being where he was in the first place. If he bought into such inventive shame it would seem quite fitting-- even logical--that a young man as morally infected as he obviously was would not only be incurable, but be made to suffer such vengeful horror in a jail-like setting in an alien nation. Keeping that in mind, we can then also envision another fairly late variant of this disease legend, the novel Meditations in Green written in 1983 by Stephen Wright witnesses that,
The privates were arguing about whose turn it was to have Number Three, apparently a girl of incredibly nimble fingers. Finally they decided to let her choose. Then they congratulated themselves on the easy availability of certified and inspected Grade A prime instead of village leftovers who all carried the Black Syph for which there was no known cure except an indefinite confinement in a military hospital on Okinawa until a treatment could be found and who were all VC sympathizer anyway with razor blades concealed up their snatches to mutilate imperialist *****s. (p. 123)
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RE: The legend of the Black Clap... - JeffB MU - 2/28 17:02:22