For the use of the concept of MacGuffin in cryptology, you with MacGuffin (cryptology) refer .  

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The MacGuffin is an original concept in the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. This term is used by the scenario writer to indicate the object which is used as pretext to start the intrigue, for example the secret formulas of the 39 steps , uranium in the Connected wine bottles in the , the amount of money stolen in Psychose and Pas of springs for Marnie or the jewels in the Hand with the collet .

In the cinema hitchcockien, this element and covetousnesses which it causes train then the hero in moultes adventures, so that the element is quickly forgotten and loses of its importance. The origin of the word would come from the following history, told by Hitchcock:

Two travellers are in a going train of London to Edinburgh. One known as with the other: “Excuse to me Sir, but what this package with the odd aspect which you placed in the net above your head? - Ah that, it is MacGuffin. - What is it MacGuffin? - Eh well it is an apparatus to catch the Lion S in the mountains of Scotland - But there are no lions in the mountains of Scotland. - In this case, it is not MacGuffin” .

Hitchcock often used this anecdote to make fun of those which require an explanation and a perfect coherence for all the elements of a film, that it calls the vraisemblants . What interests it is to handle the spectator, and whom it has as fear as the hero or heroin of his film. It does not matter the small approximations on probability. Hitchcock regarded films as a spectacle in oneself and not a certified copy of reality.

This is why in films of Hitchcock MacGuffin is completely anecdotic, it is an element of the history which is used for even initializing it to justify it but which proves, in fact, without much importance during the development of film.

Examples

Some significant examples of the anecdotic role of MacGuffin:

• In Psychosis (1960), MacGuffin is the money concealed by Marion with its owner at the beginning of film; the continuation is so enthralling that the money is well quickly forgotten, but it is him which started the history.

• Pulp Fiction (1994) of Quentin Tarantino, in which an attach3e case, whose mysterious contents appear only by one gilded light, passes between the hands of the protagonists.
• Captive Spanish the of David Mamet (1997), which tells one swindles on a product that one will never know.
• In Ronin of John Frankenheimer (1998), of the Russian and Irish spies disputes a mysterious package; this one is never open, which does not remove anything with the suspense and the intense action film.
• In the Young lady of Honor (2004), Claude Chabrol, itself large admiror of Hitchcock, introduced a statue of Flora which launches film, but whose importance decrease gradually.

Philosophy

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, large admiror of Hitchcock, uses the concept of MacGuffin as illustration of principles structural of the Psychanalyse of Jacques Lacan in his book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (Goal Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock) . In 2003, Žižek compared supposed the weapons of massive destruction of Iraq with MacGuffin.

External bond

• The MacGuffin Webpage

Random links:

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