Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture

by William D. Romanowski

Publisher:

Brazos

, 2007

Overview

Grounded in Christian principles, this accessible and engaging book offers an informed and fascinating approach to popular culture. William D. Romanowski provides affectionate yet astute analysis of familiar, well-loved movies and television characters from Indiana Jones to Homer Simpson, and he speaks with historical depth and expertise on films from Casablanca to Crash and music from Bruce Springsteen to U2.

Romanowski’s confessional approach affirms a role for popular culture in faithful living. Practical, analytical approaches to content, meaning, and artistic style offer the tools to participate responsibly and imaginatively in popular cultural activities. An engaging read, this new edition introduces students and thoughtful readers to popular culture--one of the most influential forces in contemporary society.

Key Features

• Explains how popular culture is art.
• Includes documenting endnotes, a bibliography, an index, and end-of-chapter summaries.
• Provides affectionate analysis of familiar, well-loved movies and television characters.

Praise for Eyes Wide Open

This revised and expanded edition of Eyes Wide Open, already a standard on the topic, widens and deepens the discourse on the popular entertainment arts. Readers will find in William Romanowski’s imaginative and down-to-earth approach to popular art as art a manifesto of Christian involvement and a matrix assessment of the sights and sounds that inescapably shape our everyday life.

--Scott Young, founder, City of Angels Film Festival

I have used Eyes Wide Open as a companion text in my Introduction to Mass Communication course. Students find Romanowski’s cogent synthesis of complex theological and philosophical concepts both accessible and engaging. Simply put, the book helps students to ‘think Christianly’ about faith and culture in meaningful ways--ways that challenge overly simplistic sacred-secular dichotomies that tend to prevent Christians from critical participation in contemporary culture. Romanowski’s work articulates in a compelling way how a faith-based perspective can function as the filter for our consumption, critique, and even creation of popular art and culture. Regardless of your church background, this book should resonate at some level.

--Robert Woods, Spring Arbor University

As a professor of popular culture at a faith-based university, I find Eyes Wide Open an ideal text. It has academic rigor yet does not overwhelm undergraduates; it has strong theology yet does not rely upon a Christian readership. Without compromising scholarship, Bill Romanowski is able to make abstract ideas concrete with clear and compelling explanations, specific illustrations, and accessible language. He has done professors and students a great favor and has gone a long way in equipping the next generation of culture makers as agents of change and agents of grace.

--Monica Ganas, Azusa Pacific University

Product Details

• Title: Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture
• Author: William D. Romanowski
• Publisher: Brazos
• Print Publication Date: 2007
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Pages: 270
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Popular culture; Religious aspects—Christianity
• ISBNs: 9781441200808, 1441200800
• Resource ID: LLS:26AD3EE833FE2F2F903DA59318FC1AD4
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-01-21T22:17:19Z

About William D. Romanowski

William D. Romanowski (PhD, Bowling Green State University) is professor of communication arts and sciences at Calvin College and is a widely respected speaker on subjects dealing with American culture and the entertainment industry. He is the author of Reforming Hollywood and Pop Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in American Life, and coauthor of Risky Business: Rock in Film.