"The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly"
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Packard’s line is a tidy insult with a theory of art tucked inside it: real creativity isn’t just having “powerful meanings,” it’s having the discipline to smuggle them in. The “hack” broadcasts. The top-flight creative worker insinuates. That distinction is less about taste than about technique and respect for the audience. Indirection assumes a reader with agency, someone who wants to participate in making meaning rather than being lectured at.
The intent is partly defensive. Packard spent his career anatomizing persuasion, consumer manipulation, and the hidden machinery of modern life. Coming from a writer steeped in how messages steer behavior, “indirectly” carries a double charge: it’s the artist’s weapon, and it’s the propagandist’s tool. The subtext is that meaning is most potent when it arrives sideways, when it bypasses our internal censors. Metaphor, narrative, humor, and ambiguity don’t dilute a message; they help it survive contact with skepticism.
There’s also a cultural jab here at midcentury mass media, where blunt messaging scales easily and subtlety is expensive. “Top-flight” implies craft under constraints: how to say something dangerous, unpopular, or simply complex in a form that can circulate. Indirection becomes a kind of stealth ethics. It can protect art from becoming a sermon, and it can protect audiences from being treated like targets.
Packard’s real provocation is that indirectness isn’t evasiveness. It’s a higher form of precision: saying exactly what you mean, without forcing the meaning to come out in one crude piece.
The intent is partly defensive. Packard spent his career anatomizing persuasion, consumer manipulation, and the hidden machinery of modern life. Coming from a writer steeped in how messages steer behavior, “indirectly” carries a double charge: it’s the artist’s weapon, and it’s the propagandist’s tool. The subtext is that meaning is most potent when it arrives sideways, when it bypasses our internal censors. Metaphor, narrative, humor, and ambiguity don’t dilute a message; they help it survive contact with skepticism.
There’s also a cultural jab here at midcentury mass media, where blunt messaging scales easily and subtlety is expensive. “Top-flight” implies craft under constraints: how to say something dangerous, unpopular, or simply complex in a form that can circulate. Indirection becomes a kind of stealth ethics. It can protect art from becoming a sermon, and it can protect audiences from being treated like targets.
Packard’s real provocation is that indirectness isn’t evasiveness. It’s a higher form of precision: saying exactly what you mean, without forcing the meaning to come out in one crude piece.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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