> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading.

That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics.

What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structure,

which is predicated and motivated by the axiom that the text must, definitionally, be subtle and its lessons profound. Because it is, you know, divine.

If you don't accept that axiom, the countervailing read is no, the characterizations are clumsy, the plots ridiculous, etc.; and it is precisely the gymnastic efforts one must go to, to find in them inspiration and divinity, that convince those who do of the ineffably mystery of the divine.

Sometimes a crude story succeeds on some merits and fails on others; when it is enshrined and glorified it creates a frankly dangerous social pressure to praise the emperor's clothes.