Girls’ Series Fiction and American Popular Culture . LuEllaD'Amico, ed. Lexington Books, 2016. 352 pp. $100.00 cloth.

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-653
Author(s):  
Terri Suico
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Series Fiction

Public Service Motivation in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Mastracci
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Service Motivation ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ◽  
The Public ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

In this paper, the author examines public service as depicted in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS). First, she shows how slaying meets the economist’s definition of a public good, using the BtVS episode “Flooded” (6.04). Second, she discusses public service motivation (PSM) to determine whether or not Buffy, a public servant, operates from a public service ethic. Relying on established measures and evidence from shooting scripts and episode transcripts, the author concludes Buffy is a public servant motivated by a public service ethic. In this way, BtVS informs scholarship on public service by broadening the concept of PSM beyond the public sector; prompting one to wonder whether it is located in a sector, an occupation, or in the individual. These conclusions allow the author to situate Buffy alongside other idealized public servants in American popular culture.

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