Recommended Books

If you’ve always thought of movies as light entertainment, a brief distraction from the harsh realities of life, or if you prescribe to the movies-are-venomous-to-the-moral-fabric-of-society school of thought, may we offer you an alternate worldview? If you’re a movie buff perplexed as to how to respond to movies that contain irreverent and theologically-challenging material, then this book is for you. If you’re a closet evangelist who watches way too many movies, this book may well prove to be the launching pad for your career as an intellectually hip evangelist.

Brian Godawa, an award-winning screenwriter, has written an extremely well thought-out and informed book on the art of watching movies. Godawa urges the Christian to be a responsible consumer of culture and intelligent cultural critic. He walks his readers through philosophical and theological analyses of movies, looking at themes of existentialism, redemption, postmodernism and more. Readers are taught to look past the obvious to the values and beliefs that motivate the movie-makers. The study of popular culture is important if Christians are to engage their cultures mindfully. What better place to start than movies, given their ubiquity? Godawa has not only given movie analysis Christian respectability, more than that, he has supplied his readers with a framework for applying the mind to an entertainment form that is not necessarily associated with in-depth or life-changing discussions. Godawa reminds his readers that movies are art and therefore “meant to stimulate thought and challenge preconceived notions.” Indeed talking about movies is a good way of making worldviews salient without having to be confrontational.

The book is limited to American mainstream movies and a reading of movies from a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant perspective. This bias is the strength of the book; one cannot be and ought not to try to be all things to all people. If you want an intellectual treatise on popular culture that doesn’t put you to sleep or wind you up the ivory tower, it’s hard to go wrong with this book. Read it and be a better-informed person.

Reviewd by Joice Gouw

Author : Brian Godawa

Direct from InterVarsity Press : Click Here

ISBN No. 0-8308-2321-2

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Hollywood Worldviews -
Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment