In the 1950s, British war films became some of the most successful national film products. They entered the national consciousness as the common frame of reference on the conflict, particularly for later generations who did not experience it first hand. Where some films produce heroic, uncomplicated retransmissions of accepted versions of known events, others offer a painful, private and subjective vision of war experience, which emphasises the compartmentalisation of the conflict, particularly in naval terms. The remarkable aura of defeat and loss is magnified in some naval examples (The Cruel Sea, The Gift Horse, Above Us the Waves, The Ship That Died of Shame), and yet downplayed, dismissed or exulted in heroic terms in others (Sailor to the King, The Battle of the River Plate). The films addressing naval subjects display remarkable consistency, despite tonal differences. A continued convergence between the stylistic and structural characteristics of the wartime documentary feature and the drama-documentary basis of many naval films is evident in several productions. The service comedy applies a basic unit of humour (inappropriate or incongruous behaviour) to the regulated environments and forms of conduct demanded within the military.

The naval film can be defined as a particularly conservative form of national, ideological expression. It draws on, propagates and reinforces a range of nostalgic, romantic, and patriotic readings and appeals, closely associated with both naval tradition and national identity, in the construction of a consensual popular history. The post-modern history films, far from opening up past events for alternative interpretations, reaffirm authorised, conclusive readings of history for normative ideological purposes. They aim at an ‘integration, synthesis, and totality’ of ‘History’, and engage in a replaying of the memory's official meaning. All war films adopt a pseudo-historical setting, placing their fictional narratives within the context of larger campaigns or commonly known events. The naval war film shares significant features of narrative construction, characterisation, representational strategy and ideological intent with the war film depicting land combat.

The contribution of the American film industry to the war effort can be divided chronologically between preparatory propagandist films and combat films. It was the feature films that constituted the most visible, accessible and influential product for home and international audiences, and the ‘most potent weapon of war in Hollywood's arsenal’. The proficiency of Hollywood in the production of genre films was an advantage for the delivery of formulaic war films, which were in any case derived from pre-war generic staples. These war films represent the American film industry's most prolonged and committed engagement ‘in documenting and making American history’. John Ford's They Were Expendable bears comparison with In Which We Serve as the definitive naval war film and tribute to the US Navy. The history of US naval aviation, from its inception to the arrival of jet aircraft, is recounted through documentary footage and fictional characters in Task Force.

This chapter seeks to provide a history of sex research on the condom, addressing the following questions: What are the consequences of getting adolescents to speak about the condom and their sexual experiences in the public arena? What impact has sex research had in producing knowledge of adolescent sexuality? Focusing on HIV/AIDS research conducted within university departments throughout the 1990s, the chapter addresses the role social scientists have played in constructing knowledge about the condom and sexuality post-AIDS, and questions the research methods used by social scientists to evaluate adolescent sexual behaviour and condom use. In particular, it analyses the consequences of qualitative research methods and their impact on the construction of adolescent sexuality, and, in examining research on condom use, shows how the issue of gay and lesbian invisibility raised in relation to the ‘Rubber Wars’ in Chapter 1 concerns the production of safer sex stories. The chapter highlights how qualitative methods constitute adolescence as an unfinished, yet-to-be-complete (hetero)sexual identity, one that is narrativised via the condom.

This chapter presents a summary of the preceding discussions. This book began with the speculative question of how to address the history of the condom. How to make sense of safer-sex discourse? In addressing this question it has been argued that what is at stake is not whether it makes sense to refer to the condom in the context of AIDS as making visible or indeed invisible certain sexualities. Rather, the book has shown how the condom concerns the production and regulation of heterosexuality.

This chapter begins with discussions of Linda Singer's observations regarding the nature of power, control and regulation in relation to sexuality; and Joshua Gamson's claims about the contemporary meaning of the condom, which are later called into question by Scott Bravmann. It then considers Simon Watney's analysis of the British media and Leo Bersani's account of the US press in the 1980s, which critically address the construction of sexuality in AIDS representations. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Since the 1980s, the preponderance of military representation in American cinema speaks to a (re)militarisation of the state and populace, correcting the defeat and defeatism of Vietnam. The pervasiveness of war films, war toys and popular images of conflict is noted as a prerequisite for the heightening of patriotism, the identification of enemies and the propagation of ideological norms. The fabrication of an adversarial relationship can be seen in the title of Behind Enemy Lines, and implies factors non-existent in the Balkan War, which are necessary to narrativise and rationalise an otherwise indecipherable, recalcitrant war. Reintroduction of such features presents a scenario in which American forces can intervene clearly and decisively, and reconfirm their superiority in the process. In this regard, the recreation of World War II serves a supplementary purpose. The repetitious history of Pearl Harbor, the rewritten history of U-571, the redeemed history of Flight of the Intruder and the revalued recent history of Behind Enemy Lines all evince such contemporaneous values and encodings.

The documentary and propagandist emphases result in distinctive national modifiers to the accepted conventions of the war film. In British wartime filmmaking, the recognition of differences across social classes, the incorporation of regional diversity in national representation and the informative worth of factual images encapsulate the judicious assimilation of documentary materials and meanings within feature film production. Naval films of the early war period adopt some facets of documentary filming, although, to inform as well as to inspire the home audience with images of the Navy's ships, crews and operations, they can also be seen to rework staples of pre-war cinema. This chapter incorporates Sergei Nolbandov's Ships With Wings, which was one of the earliest examples of wartime naval representation; similar in its upbeat propagandist conception to The Lion Has Wings. The focus of the documentary footage rests upon the aircraft and operations of the Fleet Air Arm, and especially upon the Navy's most famous aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal. Early wartime propaganda films establish the negative portrayal of U-boat crewmen as stereotypical Nazis, whose cunning and brutality are as inevitable as their defeat and death at the hands of their outraged victims. The fundamental importance of the maritime effort to the nation's survival means that the dedication of films to the Royal and Merchant navies registers more as a debt which the state owes to greater institutions and older traditions.