Introduction

Harold Lloyd’s The Freshmanpresented a self-reflexive comedic image of the first American youth culture – the 1920s college – as a space of conspicuous leisure and consumption. In the process, Lloyd’s film became one of the top-grossing comedies of the silent era. As the introduction discusses, The Freshman innovated by combining age-old themes of “being yourself” with a new era of conforming to middle-class norms, capitalizing on a cultural fascination with youth in the 1920s.