>>1025319
I think I have a relevant anecdote that might at least give an interesting take. No idea where I heard/read it but I've always called it the story of the professor and the student.
In school there is a professor that teaches English. Year after year he teaches the same subject matter to students, using the same materials. Let's say that he uses Moby Dick because it's well known and has enough symbolism that a professor may use it to teach. So every year he will have to assign and then read reports on Moby Dick from every student. Sometimes multiple papers by each student. Now, the story of Moby Dick never changes and as such these papers end up being pretty much the same thing written just slightly different. That is, of course, until a particular student arrives. This student doesn't care about studies and has mostly gotten through most classes by bullshitting. So when he has to do work on Moby Dick he responds the way he always has, make shit up and use every rhetorical trick in the book to make it sound plausible enough that he can't be accused of not thinking. He writes a story about how Moby Dick was actually a representation of the desirable hetero-normative behaviors of women, and how Ahab had to pierce it with his spear/penis no matter the cost in the ultimate assertion of power and rape. The professor, bored to tears of papers about what actually happens in the book, gives this unique take on the work high marks and praises the student for such imaginative interpretation of the work. Thus the student moves on with an ever inflating ego that what he is doing is smart, and the legitimacy of various professors praising his new ideals.
Now, this isn't to say that this is even the norm these days. But you can see the general principal of how these 'deconstructionists' ie: Bullshit artists come up. From there I very much think it's just Dunning-Kruger effect in action. People who are actually competent in the fields of writing and story telling are either intimidated away from even starting or are carefully doing their works the correct way. Meanwhile the incompetent bullshit artist is grabbing work because he relies on social connections more than actual accomplishments. He's the hot new writer on the scene and a company hears that and puts him on a project, from there he just rewrites the character as a new 'interpretation' of x,y or z. Then it's the tapdance of justification. If it's the failure it's most likely to be then everyone justifies it under any number of reasons, eg: The work was ahead of its time, audiences just didn't 'get' it, it was a little to smart for the room. If it's a rare success then the person is suddenly praised as the second coming of christ for the story and is given a lifetime blank check to fuck up any other property he wants. This phenomena is exactly why the comics industry is full of untalented hacks that are screaming about how it's all the fault of Russian Robotic Gambino Gators that their work isn't selling, or that the 'harrasment' is why they aren't doing their best work.
TLDR: Promotion of material went from merit based to a popularity contest