The post-war period saw the demonisation – by police, media and some social workers – of new forms of commercial leisure specifically targeted at the teenage market. This chapter begins by examining juvenile court proceedings relating to young people’s consumption of alcohol and other drugs, arguing that there was a fundamental mismatch between heightened concern and low incidence of judicial charges. It then outlines the tactics that were used by the police and others in authority to regulate commercial leisure venues (cinemas, dance halls, coffee ‘beat’ clubs) associated with young people and which all too frequently became the focus of ‘moral panic’. As city centres were redesigned to remove the effects of blitz and blight, the commercial district was subjected to closer scrutiny and regulation by police and local authorities. More rigorous control over public and, increasingly, commercial space through process of restriction and exclusion was targeted specifically at ‘troublesome teenagers’ in the post-war period.

Concerns about increases in young people’s criminality during the Second World War and into the 1960s were accompanied by similar anxieties about sexuality. Both were viewed, by the institutions associated with the state and civil society, as symptoms of a decline in Christian values and moral standards. Teenage sexual ‘precocity’ was seen as a social problem because it was connected in the minds of its critics to increased incidence of venereal disease, a rising ‘tide’ of births outside of marriage (‘illegitimacy’), and cycles of poor parenting (the ‘problem family’). Its implications were viewed as medical as well as moral and, despite the decline of eugenics discourse (which had emphasised racial deterioration), as a threat to national strength. This chapter examines strategies of moral regulation relating to young people including the operation of child protection legislation, the prosecution of boys for criminal offences, and growing concern about teenage pregnancy from the late 1950s onwards.

This chapter sets case studies of Manchester and Dundee within a broader comparative context to profile the kinds of cases that were dealt with by juvenile court magistrates. Firstly, it discusses opportunities and incitements for theft in relation to patterns of youthful consumption and taste, as well as the effects of municipal re-housing and changes in the lay-out of urban space. Secondly it argues that contestation over the use of the city for play and recreation led to a significant proportion of juvenile court appearances in court, suggesting continuity with the interwar period. Finally, it discusses the ethos of the juvenile court itself, examining the criticisms of the system that led, ultimately, to divergence between England and Scotland with the setting up of the Children’s Hearing system north of the border after 1968.

This chapter offers a micro-political analysis of the regulation of young people in post-war Britain, examining models of authority and discipline, firstly within home and family, then in terms of immediate neighbourhood, and finally with regard to the broader local community (including agencies such as schools and churches). Patriarchal frameworks, in which authority was derived from ‘position’ and was associated with masculinity and maturity, continued as a key reference point in the 1940s and 1950s. Ideas of duty, obligation and citizenship encompassed deference towards a chain of command. Increasingly however, and most noticeably towards the end of the 1960s, young people themselves were more likely to be viewed as a recognized group or set of stake-holders within communities, their opinions sought and valued, and attempts made to include them within initiatives as equal partners. Any shift needs to be qualified, however, as uneven and partial. Moreover, the post-war period also saw an intensification of the processes of spatial restriction and delimitation of young people, linked to the re-housing of inner-city populations and the increasing association of the street with car usage.

This chapter examines the range of formal institutions and mechanisms – including borstals, approved schools, detention centres, remand homes, probation and supervision – that aimed to reform juveniles who had been processed by the courts for criminal or status offences. An uneven but discernible shift in rhetoric and ethos was apparent across the period 1945-1970; corporal punishment was increasingly rejected and there was a move towards psychiatric intervention, democratic forms of governance and person-oriented approaches to the management of behaviour. However, lack of resources, including deficiencies of accommodation and staffing, remained a problem for many services. Thus it can be argued that the penal-welfarist approach to youth justice, assumed to be hegemonic in the post-war years, was never fully or consistently delivered.

The tendency to subsume submarine films within the combat genre does not credit their recognisable narrative and representational differences, even where they are properly identified. This chapter distinguishes the films according to these differences, not only from other wartime productions, but also from other naval war films in matters of degree. Filmic representations of American submarine operations reveal marked consistencies, in the characterisation of crews and commanders, stock situations and representational conventions, as well as being governed by the overarching ideological imperatives. Destination Tokyo is analysed at length in Basinger's assemblage of the combat film paradigm, because of its commonality with many infantry combat films. Post-war submarine films foreground conflicts in command within the confines of sub-surface craft. The questioning of authority which these post-war submarine films undertake is more searching and potentially damaging than that seen in examples depicting surface ships. The challenge to command authority, vested in the rebellious executive officer, also recurs in comedy films set aboard submarines. These films turn on the humour of incongruity and unmilitary conduct within the context of regulation- and tradition-bound institutions.

Star Trek's adaptation of naval history and imagery to science fiction can be read in the light of relation to the depiction of scientific and military responses to alien threats. In their deliberate evocation of a known, shared, naval heritage, the Star Trek films and series create an unchallenging, incontestable ‘space’ for pride in national history and naval prowess. The accessibility and expansion of the Star Trek format in its films and spin-offs underpin its relevance and prompt its replication in another, more specifically navalised, post-Cold War science fiction series, Sea Quest DSV. As illustrated by the Japanese animated series and films, which portray the adventures of Space Battleship Yamato, the reinvocation of naval history and heroism in science fiction is not simply an American prerogative. This vessel, built from the remains of the sunken World War II battleship, defends Earth against alien invaders. The poignancy of this vessel and her name as a symbol of Japan is further enshrined by her self-destruction to save planet Earth in Yamato yo towa ni/Be Forever, Yamato.

The moral clarity and narrative certainty sought in the war film genre were not readily or universally applicable to the circumstances of political confrontation, military posturing or wars by proxy in which the United States found itself engaged after 1945. Even though these uplifting consistencies had appeared within the war films produced during wartime, other contradictory, and recurring, textual features often vitiated their reassurances of unity and ultimate victory. American films of the 1950s can be seen to desire the insertion of the wartime cinema's conventions into Cold War narratives, to safeguard ideological and entertainment values. The frequent staging of the war at sea rather than on land within Cold War films recognises the fluidity and geographical uncertainty of conflict in the period. The Korean War (1950–53) provided an opportunity for the recreation in filmic terms of the narratives and images of World War II, particularly in the Pacific theatre. However, in Hell and High Water, the inevitability of loss and the necessity of total commitment in the ideological confrontation of the Cold War are evident.