ABSTRACT
The Freshman has continued to influence on the history of youth culture and the youth film genre. As this chapter discusses, The Freshman’s legacy was to popularize three youth film genre conventions: formal education as a social rite of passage, the archetype of the young, white, middle-class male searching for his identity through athletics and other forms of play, and the role of contemporary media in shaping youth identity. In these aspects, The Freshman’s influence can be discerned in films like Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Animal House (1978), Dazed and Confused (1993), and Eighth Grade (2018).
