Can a character be a MacGuffin? I’ve always thought Buttercup from the Princess Bride was vaguely MacGuffin-like, at least for the first part of the movie. She doesn’t have much of an actual character, but several different people are trying to posess her for various reasons, and it’s difficult to actually figure out why, because we never see anything remotely desireable about her, IMHO.
The green sack in Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison.
[Spoiler]The sack always having ahung in one spot in his Aunt Pilate’s house, Milkman Dead discovers via a conversation with his father that it might be filled with gold ingots from a cave where his father and aunt discovered it in their teens.
When he finds out it only contains human bones, his quest for the gold leads him on a journey back to his roots. He (and his accomplice-then-potential-assassin, Guitar) discovers his family’s real name and heritage, reveals his aunt’s regret at not taking care of her murdered father’s remains was for naught (she had them all along but thought they were a white man her brother Macon killed in the cave) and sparks a reconcilation of sorts of his father, Macon, until then estranged from his sister because of the gold.[/Spoiler]
Arguably, Rosario Dawson’s in Men in Black II.
Are we limited to good movies? I’d name the tomb of Mary Magdelane in The Da Vinci Code. They never find it, and it seems that it will be at least several hundred more years before it’s ever found. So, as far as I could tell, it might as well have been anything else, possibly just some purported steamy love letter between Mary and Jesus.
In one of David Bischoff’s novels, either Star Spring or * Star Fall*, the protagonist is drawn into interstellar affairs by acquiring an illegal artificial body that various people are seeking. The model name of this body is, of course, “MacGuffin”. It’s memorable to me because of the name, naturally.
The sword in Crouching Tiger, certainly. I recall it was about trying to get a sword, though damned if I can remember any more about it.
Whatever the winner gets in the Highlander franchise (and oh do I feel geeky for even mentioning that).
I think that it could be said that ‘Miranda’ in Serenity could be considered a Macguffin.
And just because I think it’s wonderful, here’s a lovely little story that Hitchcock himself once told about the origin of the term:
You have just made my day!!!
That’s more of an example of “Character as device”. A character who has no personality and merely exists to fill a function in the plot. Buttercup isn’t exactly a pure example of this, but she’s close…a princess who only exists in order to be rescued. The generic princesses in the genre fiction that “The Princess Bride” is spoofing are examples of this.
Hardly. Miranda is a long way from being generic:
It’s the planet from which the Reavers were spawned, and knowledge of the Federal Government’s complicity in the Reavers creation (and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Miranda’s inhabitants) is
(a) what is driving River crazy;
(b) why the Feds want her captured so badly; and
(c) what ultimately persuades Malcolm’s crew to go along with his quixotic plan; and
(d) what causes the Operative to realize that he’s not a monster serving the side of the angels; he’s a pawn serving monsters. Deciding to no longer be either monster or pawn is what causes him to spare Malcolm & the crew.
Nothing about Miranda could be changed without requiring major alterations to the plot and characterizations of Serenity. Even more than the One Ring, it’s the anti-MacGuffin.
Exactly what I was coming in here to say, and in considerably fewer words.
Actually, the television edition of Firefly illustrates the exact difference between a MacGuffin and a Not-MacGuffin by showing us a moment where the former becomes the latter. In the first aired episode, “The Train Job,” Our Heroes - petty thieves by trade - are hired by a stereotypically horrible gangster to steal a shipment. For forty minutes of sixty, the exact nature of that shipment couldn’t be less relevant. The point of the show - thematically and in terms of character development - comes out of the ways the characters interact in pursuit of the shipment, even in their attitudes toward the theft itself. The contents of the shipment are entirely irrelevant.
Then, the leader of Our Heroes learns what the shipment actually is. And suddenly, it becomes relevant. The specific nature of what is in the crates he has stolen helps redefine the characters we have been following, contributes to the story’s themes.
Another character says this:
“You were truthful back in town. These are tough times. A man can get a job, he might not look too close at what that job is. But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours, well, then he has a choice.”
So the job is a MacGuffin… until it’s not. I always thought that was pretty cool.
Remember folks, that the essence of MacGuffinhood is that no matter how much the characters care about the MacGuffin, the audience doesn’t care.
If the author has an object that the audience DOES care about, it’s not a MacGuffin. An object that fulfils a plot point isn’t neccesarily a MacGuffin…the loaded gun on the mantlepiece in the first act isn’t a MacGuffin. The One Ring isn’t a MacGuffin, since the audience understands exactly what it is, and what it does, and why, and the One Ring is developed into a character in its own right.
The MacGuffin is something that everyone is chasing after and fighting over, but nobody cares about. Stolen plans, diamonds, uranium, a nuclear bomb, if it doesn’t matter what the item is, then it’s a MacGuffin. Sure, there’s some “bad thing X will happen” if they don’t get the MacGuffin, but it doesn’t matter what the bad thing X is, because the movie isn’t about the bad thing X, and if it turns out that the movie really is about bad thing X then the object wasn’t a MacGuffin.
The reason authors should be aware of the theory of the MacGuffin is so that they don’t waste the audience’s time developing and explaining and describing the desired object. If the point is the chase after the desired object, it doesn’t matter what the desired object is. Rather than spend the first half of the movie talking about how important the secret plans are, just cut to “What’s in the briefcase, the secret plans? Good, thought so. What do we do, chase after them? Good, thought so.” It’s a theory that allows creators to improve their work by cutting out lots of pointless exposition that the audience doesn’t and shouldn’t care about.
The Papers in Road To Rio.
(paraphrased from memory)
Hope: Stop- this wedding, I have The Papers.
Somebody : Papers can’t stop a wedding.
Hope : These Papers can.
(Hope shows The Papers to Somebody. The wedding is canceled)
Crosby: What’s in those Papers?
(Hope puts The Papers in his pocket, looks directly at audience)
Hope : The World must never know.
Heh, it’s quote from interview Hitchcock/Truffaut. I love this book. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only person that read it.
One of the things that hooked me on Firefly (besides the scene that everyone else cites) is Mal’s response: “I don’t believe he does.”
Sums up Mal’s character. Right is right. There is no “choice” involved.
Anybody mentioned the “galaxy” in Men in Black, yet?
I can’t decide if Kathy Griffin’s comedy routine revolves around the Mac Guffin as a device? She offers up the quest of the celebrity, but it is usually all about her exploits and the often hilarious story. Every Macguffin is unique, but does it matter if it’s Ryan Seacrest or Lindsay Lohan for the development of her stand up?
Is the Comedic use of the Macguffin different than the literary standard?
I’ll bet there is a story teller in the highlands or on the Islands name of McGuffin, that tells stories just like Kathy Griffin.