MacGuffin

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MacGuffin (also: McGuffin) is the term for more or less arbitrary objects or people, which are usually used in a film to trigger the plot or to advance the plot without being of particular use. In crime films and thrillers in particular , the MacGuffin is, alongside the classic Whodunit, a widespread means of maintaining tension throughout the entire film plot. The coining of the term is attributed to the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and his screenwriter colleague Angus MacPhail.

Explanation

A typical MacGuffin is a document with a secret formula, compromising information or illegal agreement that ends up in the hands of a more or less innocent person, or it can just as easily be a bag with the loot of a bank robbery - for the plot of the film is the content of the document or that Money in the pocket is of secondary importance, it focuses on the hunter-prey constellation that the change of ownership entails and the resulting dramatic situations of pursuit and escape, in which the viewer identifies with the hunter or the hunted.

In an interview with Hitchcock conducted by François Truffaut in 1966, Hitchcock explained a MacGuffin with the following little story, which should clarify its arbitrariness:

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.

“It could be a Scottish name from a story about two men driving a train. One man asks: 'What kind of package is that in the luggage rack?' 'Well,' says the other man, 'that's a MacGuffin.' 'What's a MacGuffin?' 'A MacGuffin is a device used to catch lions in the Scottish highlands.' 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'Well, it's not a MacGuffin either.' You see, a MacGuffin is nothing. "

Slavoj Žižek describes the ring in Richard Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen as the “greatest MacGuffin of all time” and as an example of the so-called object small a in Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis .

There is controversy over the question of whether a MacGuffin can still be an integral part of a film's story. Examples are the stones in The Fifth Element or Rosebud in Citizen Kane , whose deeper and essential meaning emerges at the end of the film. It is also questionable whether it is a MacGuffin if the object and its properties are precisely defined (e.g. money in Psycho ).

Examples

Examples from Hitchcock films

  • the secret organization "39 steps" in the film of the same name (1935), about the meaning and nature of which one does not learn anything until shortly before the end of the film
  • the popular melody in A Lady Disappears (1938), which motivates the heroes' opponents to their intrigue and whose meaning is finally revealed
  • the person of the first Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca (1940)
  • the "secret clause" in The Foreign Correspondent (1940)
  • The contents of the wine bottles in Notorious (1946): in the original it is about weapons-grade uranium in the hands of old Nazis, in the first German dubbing it was turned into drugs in the hands of a dealer gang; the change suppresses the historical-political background, but does not detract from the plot
  • the lighter with the engraved initials in Der Fremde im Zug (1951)
  • the true identity of John Robie ( Cary Grant ) in Above the Roofs of Nice (1955)
  • the McKittrick Hotel in Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead (1958)
  • the "government secrets" in The Invisible Third (1959)
  • the $ 40,000 in Psycho (1960)
  • the "World Peace Formula" in The Torn Curtain (1966)
  • the microfilm in Topas (1969)

Examples from films by other directors

Examples from other media

  • In the radio play series Held & Jedermann by Ben Calvin Hary , an extraterrestrial artifact called "MacGuffin" appears in several episodes, which nobody knows what it is, but which everyone is after
  • In episode 4.06 of the television series Community , the MacGuffin Neurological Institute serves as the trigger for the action of the episode without any further information about this institute.

See also

literature

  • Mike Digou: Hitchcock's MacGuffin in the Works of David Mamet . In: Literature - film quarterly (LFQ) . 31/4 (2003), 270-275.
  • Anton Fuxjäger: The MacGuffin: Nothing or not? Definition and dramaturgical aspects of a term suggested by Alfred Hitchcock . In: Maske and Kothurn 52/2 (2006), 123–154.
  • François Truffaut : Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do it? . Heyne, 2003. ISBN 3-453-86141-8

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martin Stollery: MacPhail, Angus (1903-1962). In: Screenonline. British Film Institute , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  2. ^ Sidney Gottlieb: Framing Hitchcock: Selected essays from the Hitchcock annual . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2002, ISBN 0-8143-3061-4 , p. 48.
  3. ↑ Žižek, Slavoj: Lacan in Hollywood , Turia & Kant, Vienna 2000, p. 12. Quoted in: Wolfgang Schmitt and Franziska Schößler: What happened to the revolution? Criticism of capitalism and the intellectual craft of art in Elfriede Jelinek's stage essay Rein Gold. In: JELINEK [JAHR] BUCH 2013 , pp. 90-106, page 98, footnote 49.
  4. ^ Rainer Maria Köppl : Hitchcock and IG Farben: Film synchronization as dance in chains. In: Lew N. Zybatow: Language contact - multilingualism - translation . Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2007.

Web links

Wiktionary: MacGuffin  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations