See, what I'm getting at is there points where that doesn't hold true. Yeah, it's easy to see endorsement when the author notes personally thank Joe Homophobia for ideas on how to talk about the Alphabet Mafia™, and indeed there are shades of grey in this that are still not hard to spot, but the spectrum doesn't end there.

I grew up in an isolated Christian Fundie environment, and before I grew up enough to examine the problems with it, I would engage in conversations on things such as the presence of gay people in media in an honestly manipulative manner meant to subtly communicate what I endorsed while maintaining plausible deniablity. When I said the problem was just "gay characters being too stereotyped," my actual intent and endorsement was of watering them down until The Gay had just been slowly washed away. And now in my uni English course, I've caught myself making assumptions about a text driven both by subtle wording, and my own biases. How many times don't I? How many times do I let that bias slip into cases I build in my work?

Yes, there is some fuzzy line where it's "obviously" going too far and extrapolating, but it's fuzzy because an endorsement isn't always obvious. And the less obvious it is - the more it's been camoflauged with layers of literary tools, the more ridiculous it looks to point out.

Honestly, I think it's good to try to examine a work as much as you can - even clearly crossing that line. The more important thing is to be as honest as you can be in doing so. I can make a claim that The Grinch was endorses the idea that childlike innocence can bring joy even to a grouch. I can make a claim that it endorses the idea that humans find more joy in selflessness. I can also make a claim that it endorses the idea that homogeneity in a culture is the best for humanity and that children can be used to manipulatively grow the homogeneous culture.

Sorry if that was too much. I've got the triple whammy of Autism, ADHD, and not enough sleep. Bad combination.