Slop.

All works reference older works.

No shit. You still shouldn't rely on references as the primary carriers of meaning when you have a point to make unless you're writing for a very narrow audience that you know will get those specific references. You shouldn't be relying on your audience recognizing a name as derived from a minor greek god, or that you're structurally paralleling a book that's on high school reading lists, or expecting them to have a grounding in 19th century cultural associations between symbols and colors for them to understand what you're saying.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare was writing slop for hogs in a vulgar dialect. He was literally meeting the public where they were in language they would understand and packaged with fart jokes they would enjoy.

a CIA plant when he rmade references to Greek and Roman mythology.

Remember that I said that symbolism, allegory, and allusion are fun little treats, they're something to fill out and reinforce a work or add foreshadowing. What I am criticizing is the practice of hiding one's point behind them, of secreting it away in a post-truth realm of free interpretation where anyone can reasonably argue you're trying to say whatever they want to imagine your point is.

If you have a point to make, it should be blunt, textual, and preferably repeated and symbolism etc should enter in as additional layers beyond that rather than instead of that.

Right, so make that 'elite education' available to all so it's no longer 'elite'.

You're still going to have people who bounce off of it, or don't retain all the mountains of possible works or concepts, or who don't enjoy the process of unraveling the special smart-lad puzzle box you've crafted, and you still can't get around the intractable fact that if the meaning of a work isn't textual it may as well literally be whatever bullshit any given reader claims it is.

this is such an disrespectful way to talk about art

It is an accurate way to talk about the role of symbolism and references. It is a toy for people who "get" it, something to play with and feel good about "solving". It is exactly the same as a game that is made to be learned and overcome. It's not profound or special or some magical elevating thing, it's a fun thing made to entertain.

The fact that my point is that if you're not just writing slop to entertain people and actually have a point you want to make you should make sure it's included clearly, bluntly, and textually within the work instead of hiding it away and leaving it up to the audience to interpret their own answers to because otherwise it won't be understood and you leave it open for anyone to just make shit up about it, and I have stated this clearly, bluntly, and in plain text in a very redundant way, and yet several people have failed to understand this and just made up their own meaning to respond to really just proves me right. Even saying your point in the plainest, clearest language you can will still have people miss or ignore it in favor of what they want to imagine, and it's even worse when you leave it ambiguous or make it purely symbolic.

the world is a complicated place and shunning subtext and nuance you're never going to be able to talk about many subjects in an interesting way.

You see, I never said to shun it. I said it's a fun little thing you include to fill out and reinforce your point, but that it can never be the exclusive medium through which you make that point. It's there to make your reader feel clever for getting it, it shouldn't be something gatekeeping comprehension of the work or the receipt of your message.

secondary school literacy is not a huge ask

While that is indeed a very low bar to clear it's also very much not a profound or special collection of trivia to reference. It's a bunch of anticommunist slop and not particularly good old novels with stilted, archaic prose and overly simple language.

There's also the fact that the core of literary analysis in school is making up whatever the fuck you feel like and arguing it like it's a math proof except you also get to make up the rules. So long as you know a few cultural touchstones and are educated enough to spot references you can just say shit means whatever you want and because there's no real textual answer you're right. Which brings us back around to the key point of "if you have something you want a work to say, you really need to make it textual instead of just hoping someone will solve the work like a fun little puzzle and arrive at the conclusion you want, and only after you have done that can you mix in the clever fun stuff to make the consumers feel smart as a treat".

I hope I'm not explaining the obvious or missing the point

Only in that we are, fundamentally, saying the same thing. I'm just emphasizing the absolute necessity of clarity if you want to actually say something, as a direct counterweight to the people who keep arguing for the primacy of symbolism and don't seem to understand what the discussion is even about here.