Assignment Day

[yesthattom]

Look how many teen movies have a day at which kids of a certain age are assigned their future role as part of a big ceremony

Comments

[geminigirl]

Coming of age rituals are significant in anthropological circles in general-our society is filled with them. It would seem to me like a logical theme to appear in literature aimed at people who are going through them.

[awfief]

++ I was going to say "coming of age" would be the search term to look for.

Perhaps Bildungsroman? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman

[awfief]

Also, many (if not all?) of those were books before they were movies. So it's a literary trope...

[cinema_babe]

Every society has its rites of passage. Some are very formal, ritualized and public such as bar and bat mizvahs and the aborigine walkabout. Especially in industrialized/Western societies, many of them are informal and have varying degrees of "publicness". Examples of this would the the quinceterra (sp?)/sweet sixteen parties; first drink, getting the drivers license, first job, first bra, high school graduation (which is officially called "commencement" indicating the beginning of the graduate's adulthood

[drwex]

I would suggest tvtropes but going there is a massive time-sink and I don't have that much time. So I'm not hot-linking it either. If you go there, on your own head be it.