In fiction, a MacGuffin is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or
other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation.
The specific nature of a MacGuffin is typically unimportant to the overall plot.
The most common type of MacGuffin is an object, place or person; other, more abstract types
include money, victory, glory, survival, power, love, or some unexplained driving force.
The MacGuffin technique is common in films, especially thrillers.
Usually the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and thereafter
declines in importance.
It may re-appear at the climax of the story, but sometimes is actually forgotten by the
end of the story.
Multiple MacGuffins are sometimes derisively identified as plot coupons.
History and use Objects that serve the plot function of MacGuffins
have had long use in storytelling; for example, the Sampo in a segment of the Finnish epic
Kalevala; such objects in stories continue through to the name-sake of the 1941 film,
The Maltese Falcon and beyond.
The name "MacGuffin" appears to originate in 20th-century filmmaking, and was popularized
by Alfred Hitchcock in the 1930s; but the concept pre-dates the term.
The World War I–era actress Pearl White used weenie to identify whatever object impelled
the heroes and villains to pursue each other through the convoluted plots of The Perils
of Pauline and the other silent film serials in which she starred.
Alfred Hitchcock The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock
popularized both the term "MacGuffin" and the technique, with his 1935 film The 39 Steps,
an early example of the concept.
Hitchcock explained the term "MacGuffin" in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: He
used the two men in the train story which follows.
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 on a train.
One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?"
And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin".
The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?"
"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 MacGuffin!"
So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.
Hitchcock related this anecdote in a television interview for Richard Schickel's documentary
The Men Who Made the Movies and for Dick Cavett's interview.
According to author Ken Mogg, screenwriter Angus MacPhail, a friend of Hitchcock, may
have originally coined the term.
George Lucas 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".
In TV interviews, Hitchcock defined a MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves,
but as to what that object specifically is, he declared, "the audience don't care".
Lucas, on the other hand, believes that the MacGuffin should be powerful and that "the
audience should care about it almost as much as the duelling heroes and villains on-screen".
Yves Lavandier For filmmaker and drama writing theorist Yves
Lavandier, in the strictly Hitchcockian sense, a MacGuffin is a secret that motivates the
villains.
North by Northwest's supposed MacGuffin is nothing that motivates the protagonist; Roger
Thornhill's objective is to extricate himself from the predicament that the mistaken identity
has created, and what matters to Vandamm and the CIA is of little importance to Thornhill.
A similar lack of motivating power applies to the alleged MacGuffins of The Lady Vanishes,
The 39 Steps, and Foreign Correspondent.
In a broader sense, says Lavandier, a MacGuffin denotes any justification for the external
conflictual premises of a work.
Broader use Some dictionary definitions are even more
vague and generalized.
For example, Princeton's WordNet defines a MacGuffin as simply "a plot element that catches
the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction", which could refer to
nearly anything at all in a story, given that audience-member attention is not reliably
predictable.
Examples Examples in film include: the meaning of rosebud
in Citizen Kane, the NOC list in Mission: Impossible or the Rabbit's Foot in Mission:
Impossible III, the briefcases in Pulp Fiction and several Coen brothers films, the Heart
of the Ocean necklace in Titanic, and the mineral unobtainium in Avatar.
Examples in television include the Rambaldi device in Alias, the orb in The Adventures
of Brisco County, Jr., and Krieger Waves in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode
"A Matter of Perspective".
Carl Macek created protoculture as a MacGuffin to unite the storylines of the three separate
anime that comprised Robotech.
Examples in literature include the television set in Wu Ming's novel 54, and the container
in William Gibson's Spook Country.
In discussing the mixed critical reception of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull, where the crystal skull in the film was seen as an unsatisfying MacGuffin, Steven
Spielberg said, "I sympathize with people who didn't like the MacGuffin because I never
liked the MacGuffin".
See also Alien space bats
Big Dumb Object Chekhov's gun
Deus Ex Machina The Double McGuffin
The Sampo Red herring
References
External links MacGuffin at TV Tropes
A.Word.A.Day — McGuffin, from Wordsmith.org FAQs Page of the Hitchcock Scholars/'MacGuffin'
website at Labyrinth.net.au