MacGuffin
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "MacGuffin".

This article is about the plot device. For the block cipher, see MacGuffin (cipher).

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise.

The element that distinguishes a MacGuffin from other types of plot devices is that it is not important what the object specifically is. Anything that serves as a motivation will do. The MacGuffin might even be ambiguous. Its importance is accepted by the story's characters, but it does not actually have any effect on the story. It can be generic or left open to interpretation.

The MacGuffin is common in films, especially thrillers. Commonly, though not always, the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and later declines in importance as the struggles and motivations of characters play out. Sometimes the MacGuffin is all but forgotten by the end of the film.

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History

According to film historian Kalton C. Lahue in his book Bound and Gagged (a history of silent-film serials), the actress Pearl White used the term "weenie" to identify whatever physical object (a roll of film, a rare coin, expensive diamonds) impelled the villains and virtuous characters to pursue each other through the convoluted plots of The Perils of Pauline and the other silent serials in which White starred.

The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized both the term "MacGuffin" and the technique. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Hitchcock explained the term in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: "[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."

Interviewed in 1966 by François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock illustrated the term "MacGuffin" with this story:

"It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks, 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well,' the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all."

Hitchcock related this anecdote in a television interview for Richard Schickel's documentary The Men Who Made the Movies. Hitchcock's verbal delivery made it clear that the second man has thought up the MacGuffin explanation as a roundabout method of telling the first man to mind his own business. According to author Ken Mogg, screenwriter Angus MacPhail, a friend of Hitchcock's, may have originally coined the term.[1]

Post-Hitchcock use of the term

On the commentary soundtrack to the 2004 DVD release of Star Wars, writer and director George Lucas describes R2-D2 as "the main driving force of the movie ... what you say in the movie business is the MacGuffin ... the object of everybody's search".[2] Where Hitchcock defined the MacGuffin in TV interviews as the object around which the plot revolves, and as to what that object specifically is, "The audience don't care!"citation needed, Lucas believes that the "MacGuffin should be powerful and that the audience should care about it almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on-screen."[3]

Harrison Ford used the word “MacGuffin” on Late Night with David Letterman to refer to the plot devices in the Indiana Jones movies, specifically citing the Sankara Stones from the second film and the Holy Grail from the third film. [4]

Film reviewer Roger Ebert mentions the use of MacGuffins in the wide range of movies he reviews, from Children of Men to Transformers.[5] [6]

Examples

Films

Television

Literature


Comics


References in Popular Culture

  • In the film Juno, the main character is named Juno MacGuff, a reference to the MacGuffin.

See also

References

  1. ^ Frequently asked questions on Hitchcock
  2. ^ Star Wars (1977) Region 2 DVD release (2004). Audio commentary, 00:14:44 - 00:15:00.
  3. ^ Keys to the Kingdom, a February 2008 Vanity Fair article
  4. ^ Late Night with David Letterman, airdate 20 May 2008
  5. ^ a b "Children of Men (review)". Rogerebert.com (October 5, 2007).
  6. ^ a b "Transformers (review)". Rogerebert.com (July 5, 2007).
  7. ^ Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Robin Wood, (1989), Columbia University Press.
  8. ^ The Maltese Falcon at Filmsite.org
  9. ^ Harmetz, Aljean (1992). Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 17. ISBN 0297812947. 
  10. ^ Soundstage! Network Home Theater & Sound, Collector's Corner, citing Truffaut, Hitchcock (1985 rev. ed.)
  11. ^ a b David Trottier (2005). The Screenwriter's Bible. Silman-James Press, p.40. ISBN 1-879505-84-3. 
  12. ^ The Columbus Dispatch: Who's Got The MacGuffin?
  13. ^ Encyclopedia II - MacGuffin - Other examples
  14. ^ DVD Review: Repo Man at scfidimensions.com
  15. ^ Tarantino A to Zed: The Films of Quentin Tarantino, Alan Barnes /w Marcus Hearn (2000).
  16. ^ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Pulp Fiction Briefcase
  17. ^ Newton.cx
  18. ^ "The Spanish Prisoner, Reviewed by Scott Tobias". A.V. Club (March 29, 2002).
  19. ^ "Martial Masterpiece". TIMEasia.com (July 10, 2000).
  20. ^ "Mission: Impossible III", Variety (May 2, 2006). 
  21. ^ ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest’ - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
  22. ^ Editorial Review of "Alias - The Complete First Season" at Amazon.com
  23. ^ A Matter of Perspective (1990) Region 1 DVD release (2002). Season 3, Disk 4.
  24. ^ "The Incredible But True Story Of Krieger Waves". DaveKrieger.net (November 5, 2005).
  25. ^ "Krieger wave". memory-alpha.org (May 15, 2008).
  26. ^ Episode description of "Once Upon A Joe"
  27. ^ The Independent, A Week in Books: An ingenious comedy-thriller, packed with clever gags by Boyd Tonkin, 24 June 2005
  28. ^ The Independent, 54 By Wu Ming reviewed by David Isaacson, 11 July 2005
  29. ^ The Hartford Advocate, Hartford Advocate reviews 'Spook Country'
  30. ^ One Piece at Shonen Jump

Further reading

  • Francois Truffaut. Hitchcock
  • Slavoj Zizek. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock)'
  • Slavoj Zizek. The Sublime Object of Ideology

External links
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