Subtext is harder to understand than communicating clearly, and so subtext can be enjoyable and signal intelligence in the same way that playing chess is more fun and shows more intelligence than playing tic-tac-toe.

I far prefer subtext in a story to in real life. In a story the worst thing that can happen is for you to beleive that 'animal farm' really is about a bunch of animals. In real life the worst that can happen is that the pilot doesn't realise that when the navigator says 'the weather radar certainly is useful' the subtext is that the weather is too sever to fly in, and promptly flies the plane into a mountain. This actually happened.