bigu y

a lot of people think the only point of engagement with art is just to decode exactly what the author was trying to say, and their intent is the "real meaning," and once you've figured out the real meaning you're done you've solved it. that's dumb and boring. don't do that.

things death of the author does not mean:

every interpretation is equally valid

you are forbidden to treat what we can know or reasonably guess about the author's intentions as something that matters to your interpretation at all

the only valid way to interpret fiction is to treat it like it's a documentary of events that really happened and never think about it in terms of "why would the creator, a human person, choose to present it this way"

authors shouldn't get to have opinions about what they intended to say through their work, they should shut up and let me tell them what it means because i know better

actually i, the person reading or watching or viewing this art, am the infallible source of real meaning, and everybody who disagrees with me is wrong including but not limited to the author