memes

Glinner is the biggest argument I've seen against Death of the Author, because once you know you're supposed to be laughing at the marginalised character and with the characters mistreating them, it's impossible to find it funny.

There's lots of examples of it too. The first time watching the theatre trip episode where a judge in drag opens the play, I'd read Roy's discomfort with the show being "too gay" as a joke on Roy being out of his element; we were supposed to laugh at his discomfort. But on rewatching it's hard to shake the idea that actually Roy's defence of "I don't want his sexuality rubbed in my face" is meant as something the audience is supposed to identify and agree with, and that far from being a knowing playful nudge at gay theatre the whole thing was a mean-spirited caricature of it. The meaning does get changed whether Roland Barthes likes it or not.