Sex and the American soldier: Military cinema and the war on venereal disease, 1918–1969

Over the course of the 20th century, venereal disease training became an increasingly prominent component of the U.S. military\u27s educational programs. This dissertation consists of a brief review of selected moments in the history of venereal disease prevention films produced by and for soldiers through the early, mid-, and post-war years of the 20 th century. The explicit purpose of this project is to examine the relationship of military education and the regulation of sexual activity as established and enhanced through the medium of film. From the standpoint of military history, I examine the interaction of the military institution with the phenomenon of venereal disease as it particularly affects gendered views of sexual behavior. The second half of the dissertation expands the discussion to include the imbrication of nationalist subject formation within the military discourse on venereal disease. I argue that the medium of film provides a unique form of historical evidence that, in combination with individual production histories, produces specific meanings about the militarized approach to venereal disease as it was carried out in the cinematic arena. The following chapters, while not exclusively focused on questions of gender, follow this thread of venereal disease prevention through its various permutations. Gender provides a useful alternative framework for interrogating the structures of nationalism that undergird venereal disease prevention efforts. Gender is demonstrated as a powerful site around which the disavowal of sexuality that drives the sex industry is allowed to coalesce. Women suffer under the consequences of this formal disavowal, as much as they are the bearers of the sex commodity that is made the more desired by the prohibition. As such, gender, along with questions of race or political radicalism, opens an imaginative window into alternate modalities for conceptualizing disease. In this case, establishing a certain instability of interpretation holds some sociopolitical and perhaps moral value. What is attempted is an exploration of what it might mean to unlock venereal disease from its cultural surround—to treat it as an unpredictable variable rather than a state of being assigned to certain patterns of metaphorical or associative thinking