Jump to content

MacGuffin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ettlz (talk | contribs) at 11:02, 25 June 2006 (→Television: Add The Prisoner). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or Maguffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story, but has little other relevance to the story itself.

Description

The element that distinguishes a MacGuffin from other types of plot devices is that it is not important what object the MacGuffin specifically is. Anything that serves as a motivation will do. A true MacGuffin is essentially interchangeable. Its importance will generally be accepted completely by the story's characters, with minimal explanation. From the audience's perspective, the MacGuffin is not the point of the story.

The technique is common in films, especially thrillers. Commonly, though not always, the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and then declines in significance as the struggles and motivations of the characters take center stage. Sometimes the MacGuffin is all but forgotten by the end of the film.

Because a MacGuffin is, by definition, ultimately unimportant to the story, its use can test the suspension of disbelief of audiences. Well-done works will compensate for this, with a good story, interesting characters, talented acting/writing, and so on. Inferior films, which fail in those areas, often only highlight a MacGuffin, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. MacGuffins may be acceptable to the general audience, but fail to be believable for experts in the subject matter (such as a particular technology, or historical detail).

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.

Director/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:

In regard to the tune [espionage intelligence encoded in music], 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 always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers.

Interviewed in 1966 by François Truffaut, 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 McGuffin explanation as a roundabout method of telling the first man to mind his own business. According to author Ken Mogg, screenwriter Angus MacPhail may have originally coined the term. MacPhail was friends with Hitchcock. [1]

More succinctly, on TV interviews from time to time, Hitchcock defined the MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves, and as to what that object specifically is, "The audience don't care!" (sic)

Examples

Template:Spoilers

Films

  • In Notorious (1946), the uranium hidden in wine bottles is a MacGuffin. It is the reason the story takes place, but could just as easily have been diamonds, gold, or rare wine. In fact, during production, there was discussion of changing it to diamonds to be more believable [2] [3].
  • In North by Northwest, the MacGuffin is the unspecified secret information known by a man for whom Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken. Thornhill spends the course of the movie trying to find the man, without realizing that he does not exist.
  • In Psycho, the money that the character Marion Crane has stolen from her employer is a MacGuffin. After Marion's subsequent disappearance, her sister and boyfriend suspect Norman Bates has murdered her for the money. However, it is revealed that Bates killed Marion without even knowing the money existed. In the end, it could have been jewelry or any number of things. The money was simply a plot device to get her to the Bates' Motel.
  • Most plots in pornographic movies are infamously driven by MacGuffins.
  • Ronin is an action/thriller that tells the story of a group of former intelligence agents who team up to steal a mysterious metal case which is a MacGuffin. The contents, if extant, are never shown; the entire plot is not about the contents so much as what happens because of it.
  • The Double McGuffin (1979) and The McGuffin (1985) are noteworthy for the contextual use of the term in their titles. The 1979 film does indeed involve two MacGuffins: a briefcase full of money and a dead body, both of which subsequently disappear.
  • In Mel Brooks' High Anxiety, there is an explicit reference to the MacGuffin: Dr. Thorndyke is told that a "Mr. MacGuffin" changed his room reservation. High Anxiety was a deliberate parody/homage to Hitchcock.
  • One particularly famous early movie example of a MacGuffin is the titular statuette in The Maltese Falcon.
  • Roger Ebert defines the term in his commentary track for Casablanca, where he points out that the "letters of transit"[4] in the film are a MacGuffin.
  • The briefcase in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is a MacGuffin. The contents are never shown; that section of the plot is not about the briefcase so much as what happens because of it. When the briefcase is briefly opened, the viewer does not see its contents, only a yellow-orange glow coming from the case; this is probably itself a homage to the glowing car trunk in Repo Man, or to the mysterious attaché case (containing "The Great Whatsit") in Kiss Me Deadly.
  • In the film Diva, the MacGuffin is a cassette tape.
  • The gold that is the target of the heist in The Italian Job could have easily been many other things, although this is the case with varied targets in many heist movies.
  • In the James Bond movie From Russia with Love, the Lektor device is a MacGuffin which everyone seems interested in acquiring but is otherwise largely irrelevant to the plot, as it never really performs any other notable function.
  • In the movie Barton Fink, Barton is given a box to hold on to by John Goodman's character, but the contents of the box are never revealed, though there is reason to believe that it is a human head.
  • The Zeppelin Tube of Firesign Theatre's Giant Rat of Sumatra—an improbable scientific device, explained by goofy scientific sounding babble, around which the plot revolves, is also a MacGuffin.
  • David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner revolves around a "process" contained in a notebook which is never revealed to the audience. Similarly, the amount of money at stake is written on a blackboard at the beginning of the film; all characters appear impressed by the dollar number, but the amount is never shown to the audience. Both are MacGuffins.
  • In The Big Lebowski, the rug that "really tied the room together" is a MacGuffin.
  • In Dude, Where's My Car?, Jesse and Chester encounter two groups of aliens who are trying to find a MacGuffin called the Continuum Transfunctioner. Somewhat ironically, Jesse's car also serves as a MacGuffin.
  • In Raise the Titanic!, Dirk Pitt attempts to locate the world's supply of byzanium, a fictional chemical substance.
  • The comedy film My Favorite Blonde, starring Bob Hope and Madeleine Carroll, is largely a parody of Hitchcock's film The 39 Steps, in which Madeleine Carroll had previously appeared. The MacGuffin in My Favorite Blonde is a piece of information which Carroll (portraying an international spy) must convey cross-country to her spymasters' headquarters, at great physical risk to herself. When Bob Hope sensibly asks her why she doesn't just phone them the information, Carroll replies that it's a diagram that can't be explained verbally.
  • The microfilm in Pickup on South Street. This is one of many Cold War films which would have us believe that a simple mathematical equation (or a diagram) contains some top-secret knowledge which could blow up the planet. Other such films are the dialogue-less movie The Thief and Hitchcock's Torn Curtain; in all such cases, the formula is a MacGuffin.
  • In the 1998 film Last Night, the MacGuffin encapsulates the details regarding an extinction level event that will apparently wipe out all life on the planet. They are hinted at (notice the significance of the sun, in particular), but the film relies on contradictory information as an attempt to draw attention away from it, and instead focus on how the characters' react to it.
  • The Enigma machine in U-571 is a textbook example of how a MacGuffin loses its importance halfway through a movie. At its core, U-571 is essentially a story about US submariners trapped on a German U-boat which they do not really know how to operate, and trying to get back to the USA and safety. The Enigma machine is simply the MacGuffin used by the scriptwriters to get the movie's characters into the U-boat in the first place. Once the characters are there, the true engine of the story takes over, and the Enigma machine is forgotten.
  • The "box", supposedly a code-breaking device in Sneakers.
  • The cold war film Mirage included a MacGuffin which was something most desirable, yet something quite impossible: a means of withstanding a nuclear explosion.
  • In Running Scared, the main character, Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker), must race against time to recover a snub-nosed handgun used to kill a corrupt cop. The gun is just the start, though, as the film becomes more about Joey trying to save his family, and a neighborhood kid (Cameron Bright), from a host of evildoers from the mean streets.
  • In Mission: Impossible III, the protagonist and antagonist both hope to gain control of a mysterious item called "Rabbit's Foot" from a laboratory in Shanghai. This item, however, becomes less important when the film begins to revolve more around IMF agent Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) desperate race to save his wife (Michelle Monaghan) from a volatile international criminal (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Its content and purpose are never revealed, despite Ethan specifically asking what it is.
  • In Connie and Carla, Rudy's kilogram of cocaine is a MacGuffin.
  • In The Da Vinci Code, Langdon and Sophie initially start solving the series of clues to reach the Sangreal Documents, however as the plot progresses the focus switches to the clues themselves and the consequences of finding the Sangreal Documents.
  • In Black Hawk Down, the two wanted miltiants in the city are the Mcguffins. Their capture and subsequent disappearance from the plot as the Battle of Mogadishu begins identify them as the Mcguffins.

Television

  • Cheers : Sam Malone's Corvette is a MacGuffin that lasts throughout the entire television series' time. The audience rarely sees this Corvette but it is the focus of several episodes and is of the highest importance to Sam, often talked about in relation to Sam's own relationships, as it is revered by all characters, especially women in Sam's life. As far as the audience is concerned though, the fact that this object is a Corvette, or a car in general, is entirely irrelevant.
  • Bionic Six : An explicit MacGuffin reference comes from an episode of the Bionic Six cartoon of the late 1980s in which the "MacGuffin Ray", a dummy weapon, is used exclusively to lure the evil Dr. Scarab out of hiding.
  • G.I. Joe : A 1986 episode of G.I. Joe, Once Upon a Joe, features a MacGuffin Device which "alters the fabric of reality" by projecting as solid hallucinations the imagination of the user.
  • Twin Peaks: Although the premise of the show is the investigation of the murder of teenager Laura Palmer, the investigation itself is a MacGuffin as the show primarily focused on the pecularities and duplicities of small town life in the rural Washington town.
  • Due South : An episode ("Chicago Holiday") of the television series Due South features a matchbook as an obvious McGuffin. In the course of the episode, we encounter a cleaner named Mrs. McGuffin, an in/out board that reads Mac | Buff | In (the top of the B is scratched out) and a security guard whose badge reads Niffug C.M. (seen in a mirror).
  • Good Eats : episode The Remains of the Bird utilizes a fictive documentary filmmaker (Blair MacGuffin) to drive its plot along.
  • Taz-Mania : In one episode of Taz-Mania, Taz's father Hugh and brother Jake accidentally acquire a carton of orange juice and spend the remainder of the episode being chased by secret agents who want it back. At the end, they look into the carton and gasp, at which point the episode infuriatingly ends.
  • Sam & Max (cartoon version) : The episode "The Glazed MacGuffin Affair" has them trying to prevent the banning of their favorite snack food, Glazed MacGuffins, which is never really described.
  • In the anime series Yu-gi-oh, the three God Cards are MacGuffins until they are discovered and played, when they cease to be.
  • Gold Roger's treasure from the anime/manga One Piece is almost certainly a MacGuffin. No one knows exactly what the "One Piece" is, but just about everyone wants to get their hands on it.
  • The Protoculture matrix from the animated series Robotech. Originally, the term protoculture had a more pedestrian meaning in the original Japanese Macross series which is the first part of the American Robotech saga. Originally, it was simply the alien word for the first civilization (proto being a Latin prefix for first). Protoculture was redefined in Robotech as a mysterious energy source, the essence of Robotechnology and the Invid's key to enlightenment. This was done in order to connect the previously unrelated Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada serials into one continuous multigenerational saga.
  • The whole premise of The Prisoner is built around a MacGuffin. The protagonist, Number Six, holds some "information". We are never told what this information is, or its significance to his captors, save that it includes the reason for Number Six's resignation (something which he claims is a matter of conscience and not open for discussion).

Written word

  • Plot devices like the MacGuffin are used in stories dating back at least to Briseis in Homer's Iliad, and possibly further back still. Other MacGuffins prior to the invention of the term include Pip's "great expectations" of future wealth in the Charles Dickens book of that title.
  • The contents of the letter in "The Purloined Letter" by Edgar Allan Poe. The hero must try to recover the letter before the villain can reveal its contents — but the reader never learns what the contents are.
  • In the short story "Doc Wilde and the Mad Skull", Tim Byrd has his pulp hero fighting to regain a secret weapon called "The MacGuffin Device" from diabolical villain Mad Skull. (The original tale was published in 1984, but recent news has come that Byrd and Australian comics artist Gary Chaloner are releasing a comic adaptation of it).
  • The Wu Ming collective's 54 features a "McGuffin Electric" television set as a plot device. In its previous work (as the Luther Blissett collective), the group has referred to actions linking objects or events in the real world as "MacGuffins".
  • In an explicit nod to Hitchcock, Paul Muldoon's 1990 long poem Madoc: A Mystery includes a shadowy, conspiratorial character named MacGuffin.
  • In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book series, MacGuffins are goblin-like creatures that offer no purpose other than testing the slayer.
  • In The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin, a MacGuffin, in this case a big 'M' identified only as a 'Maguffin' in the book, becomes key to unraveling of the story's mystery. Jack, one of the book's protagonists, describes a Maguffin humorously, and accurately, in this way: "In all detective thrillers, there is always a Maguffin. The Maguffin is the all-important something, the all-importantness of which will not become apparent until its important moment has come." In an earlier Rankin book, Raiders of the Lost Car Park, a character named MacGuffin actually appears, although he is nothing to do with the plot device.
  • In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, the main character's cat and its disappearance (and later re-appearance) is a classic MacGuffin, mostly seeing how he disappears to stimulate the character to start his investigation — then returns once the stimulant is no longer necessary (another disappearance serves a much more important stimulant, making the cat's absence no longer necessary).
  • In Running Dog, a postmodern thriller by Don DeLillo, the characters are almost all in pursuit of a reputedly pornographic film shot during the last days of the Second World War in Hitler's bunker. The essential MacGuffin nothing-ness of this film (as noted by Hitchcock) also becomes evident.

Comics

  • In Jaka's Story, Oscar attracts a new customer to the bar by painting a statue called a Guffin. Eventually, the Guffin is also what attracts the attention of the Cirinists, which sets the stage for the story's ending.
  • In Terminal City, the briefcase is a MacGuffin, because it leads and confronts every character on the city, and the reader never learns what's inside it. The last page of the series shows a man opening the briefcase, which has something glowing inside, and running away, leaving it.

Video games

  • In nearly every game of the Super Mario series Princess Peach serves as a living, breathing MacGuffin
  • In EarthBound, a man in the hospital in the town of Twoson mentions that he left something important in the hospital in the next town over. This sidequest involves searching the drawers in the hospital of the town of Threed to find an item named "Insignificant Item." If this item is then returned to the man in Twoson, the player is rewarded, but never told anything regarding what the item actually is or why it is important. This item is a tongue-in-cheek MacGuffin in that the game designers even went so far as to call it the "Insignificant Item."
  • In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, one mission has you told from a pay phone to go to an airport, kill a certain man there, take his briefcase and bring it back to a location. After killing the man and stealing the briefcase, you are trailed and shot at by two black cars. Essentially every element of this mission is a MacGuffin. The player's employer, identity of the man with the briefcase you kill, the contents of the briefcase, and who is behind the black cars chasing the player are never revealed.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the main character CJ is asked by The Truth to steal a mysterious bottle of green goo from a military train. What the goo actually is, or its importance to The Truth is never revealed.
  • In the Elder Scrolls series, the titular Elder Scrolls themselves are MacGuffins, oftentimes having little or no bearing to the main quest.
  • In Fallout a vital circuit-board, the Water Chip, which controls the water-purification processes of Vault 13 (a massive fallout-shelter), breaks and the player is charged with finding a replacement. The search for the Water Chip sends the player to neighboring Vault 15, The Hub, and many other areas.
  • Fallout 2 's MagGuffin is the "G.E.C.K.", or "Garden of Eden Creation Kit", a prized bit of Pre-War technology contained in a briefcase which is sought by the Arroyo Tribe (which was founded by "The Vault-Dweller", the player-character of the first Fallout) to end their severe crop-failures. The G.E.C.K.s were provided to all Vaults in order to establish a foothold for civilization in the post-war world. Vault City, a lush and civilizated (but very exclusive and controlled) community, was created using a G.E.C.K.
  • Many video games in the adventure and RPG genres include simple fetch quests, in which the object is to obtain an item for some random Non-player character in order to advance the plot. As the item in question is frequently irrelevant or unrelated to the plot, and the main characters generally have no reason to retrieve it other than to satisfy the NPC and obtain something they need, these quests serve as MacGuffins. This is often compounded when the quest to retrieve one such item encounters a roadblock in the form of another character desiring yet another item, extending into a long sequence of item trading.
  • In most roguelikes, the game's victory condition involves travelling to the farthest reaches of the game world, attaining a MacGuffin, and then escaping the game world, usually by returning to the starting location. In Rogue, Hack and NetHack, the MacGuffin is the Amulet of Yendor. In Dungeon Crawl, the MacGuffin is the Orb of Zot. In Angband, the MacGuffin is slaying Morgoth.
  • A variant on this theme is the common practice in many adventure games to include an item which the player must collect a certain number of in order to unlock more areas (containing more such items), gain new abilities (which help to collect more such items), or otherwise advance towards the actual goal of the game. Examples include the Jigsaw Pieces ("Jiggies") in Banjo-Kazooie, the Power Stars in Super Mario 64, and the Golden Bananas in Donkey Kong 64. These are actually closer to plot coupons than bona fide MacGuffins.
  • In the video game Star Control II (Also in the remake, The Ur-Quan Masters) the mercantile race of the Melnorme offer a MacGuffin to the player: when first encountered and discussing the supply of information for credits, the bridge of their craft changes colour to purple. When questioned as to why their bridge turned purple, they offer to supply this information in exchange for 12 million credits, which are only obtainable via supplying them with 'harvested' biological specimens and information. However, it is impossible to raise these funds, so the secret will remain so. They are also interested in the location of so-called Rainbow Worlds, planets that confound conventional scanners. Although they become of use later in the plot, the reasons that the Melnorme require the locations of these worlds are not disclosed - it is a MacGuffin in that it has no bearing on the outcome, but is a plot device which the player is able to act upon.
  • In the video game Indigo Prophecy the Indigo Child holds a secret that will give the ultimate answer of life, and a race against time to hear the Indigo Child's secret takes place. Depending on the player's actions a different faction will hear the secret, but in every scenario it is never revealed what the secret itself is.
  • One of the major plot arcs of the space simulator classic Wing Commander II revolves around a traitor aboard the main character's carrier, whose existence is only realized after the traitor kills a communications officer named McGuffin. Other than dying, McGuffin's sole action in the story is to get a cup of coffee.
  • In Freelancer, the mysterious artifact egg is most likely a MacGuffin, at least until its true function is verified.

More information

See also

References

  • Francois Truffaut. Hitchcock. ISBN 0671604295.
  • Slavoj Zizek. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). ISBN 0860915921.
  • Alton Brown. Good Eats. Episode EA1C14.
  • A.Word.A.Day — McGuffin, from the website of an amateur linguist who edited a book (ISBN 0471230324) assembled from the site's material
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=MacGuffin&oldid=60477512"