The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture

Author(s):  
Bernice M. Murphy
Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Mastracci

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.


Author(s):  
Robert Paul Seesengood

This essay is an examination of scholarship on the Bible and (American) popular culture. It reviews the history and assumptions of cultural studies and maps how this body of work influenced biblical scholarship after 1990. It surveys an array of examples of scholarship on the Bible and popular culture and concludes with some suggestions for future work. Specifically, this essay asks the following: How has interest in Bible and popular culture affected academic publishing? How did these trends emerge, and what assumptions prompt them? What new journals or series or reference works have appeared that are specifically devoted to this broad topic, and what are some ways that the Bible and popular culture have been treated therein?


Author(s):  
Tina Pippin

The Rapture is the sudden and hoped for event of the second coming of Jesus Christ in the clouds to raise true Christian believers to heaven. American popular culture has played with this scenario in a variety of genres (e.g., television, film, novels), most often in a satirical way. From the faith perspective, the Rapture is a major theme in Christian fiction (the Left Behind series) and follows a timeline of political and historical events. Representations of the Rapture in popular culture often reflect the current political climate and the psychological anxiety, isolation, and sense of persecution of believers.


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