Lewis and Tolkien

While sipping chardonnay last night, I watched the PBS retrospective on C.S. Lewis and thought it well done if brief. While sipping brandy directly after, I watched the PBS retrospective on Tolkien and came away less impressed (with the show, not the brandy). How odd, I thought, that the Lewis documentary rightly emphasized the centrality of Christianity in his fiction, while the Tolkien peice did not. Instead, viewers were given a map overview of Middle Earth and a plot description of the trilogy, spiced in between with fantasy illustrations and commentary. I kept thinking, these are like Star Trek convention people, who dress up like the characters and decorate their homes with comic book art -- there is more than just hobbits and orcs here. There is a message. Do they understand?