Is it so hard to accept the fact that an author might not be completely 100% conscious of all the things influencing them when creating a work of art? That some choices they made because they just felt right in the moment come from somewhere else? And that someone else can see this happening from an external perspective and propose that way of reading the text that the author didn't think about?
At the same time, is it monstrous to put forward the option that you, as an audience member, are not a passive brainless drone, but you are collaborating in creating the meaning of what you experience? That your inner life and meaning and interpretation stemming from being exposed to art are actually interesting and worth talking about?
Why do we have to live in a world where we assume words written on a page or colors dripped on a canvas have a single truly objective interpretation? Why do we have to beat with a stick on the head of someone telling them "no, you're enjoying this work in the wrong way because the author said so"?
If such things influence works of fiction, they must surely influence works of nonfiction just as much, if not more so — yet I never had a schoolteacher ask me to analyze nonfiction writings anywhere close to the depth I had to analyze novels.
It wasn't until the tertiary level that I first analyzed science writings and related philosophy writings to a similar depth (albeit for a different purpose), and discovered to my delight how many of them are written with a beauty and a kind of humanity that verges on poetry. It moved me in ways that fiction never has, I think in part because of the purity and honesty of my discovery — so unlike the trudging hours I spent miming proundness in school until I could no longer recognize it.
I am truly glad that nonfiction analysis was neglected in school, because it otherwise would have been robbed of all its spirit and magic, too.
Why do we force students to analyze text in this manner at the cost of killing their love for recreational reading? So many children, who once loved story time best of all, grow up to hate books and poetry. Yet they still love the search for meaning in cinema and music which, as yet, still remain mostly beyond the killing touch of involuntary study.
Is it any wonder literary analysis feels fake to so many people?
If you look at it, I'm sure you'll find equally plenty of people rolling their eyes at film critics for "making that up".
But I broadly share the sentiment of your message, and I personally blame some sort of variation of Goodhart's law. School curricula take an unquestionably good thing ("the critical search of meaning is an important skill to have") and have to pigeonhole it into something standardized and quantifiable (otherwise, how can you stitch a grade number to it? The horror!). The result is this desolate widespread contempt for everything that is not a literal interpretation.
At the same time, is it monstrous to put forward the option that you, as an audience member, are not a passive brainless drone, but you are collaborating in creating the meaning of what you experience? That your inner life and meaning and interpretation stemming from being exposed to art are actually interesting and worth talking about?
Why do we have to live in a world where we assume words written on a page or colors dripped on a canvas have a single truly objective interpretation? Why do we have to beat with a stick on the head of someone telling them "no, you're enjoying this work in the wrong way because the author said so"?