We once read a book called "Feed" in high school - a ham fisted anti-capitalist book. Wherein citizens are 100% connected to an internet like service that only exists to sell them products. 90% of the class couldnt get it. Even when the teacher sat down and explained the entire plot of the book they still couldnt wrap their head around it.
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It really is wild how "show don't tell" went from being advice about literally showing background details in a visual medium instead of just having characters stand around on stage talking about mundane stuff into being a literary advice that actually means "tell, but only tell gently and as obtusely as possible to make it hard to understand what you're on about."
And then you can go and make the most hamfisted message possible and literally have the narrator say your message clearly and explicitly and people still won't get it, because they're so conditioned to media being deliberately pointless and empty or open to interpretation. You can unironically go and make a character whose entire thing is that he's a really stupid, self-defeating bigot and chuds will still go "omg so based this guy gets it" and fanboy over him.
56% of Americans are below the literacy level needed to interpret complex information from a text, which I read as 60% of Americans can't understand metaphor and 90% can't understand a subtle one.
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I know there are good things that end being "open to interpretation" where there's supposed to be enough context that the reader gets the point without it being explicitly stated, but there's way more shit things trying to be good that just never had any point to make in the first place.