In John Frankenheimer’s Ronin, a team of professionals brought together for the job tries to take a metal case away from some dangerous groups. Although it keeps changing hands, we never find out what is inside.
It turns out to be a MacGuffin, an object around which the plot of a movie or book revolves. The heros crave possessing it and are willing to do anything to get it.
The term was coined by screenwriter Angus MacPhail and became popular after The 39 Steps. Its director, Alfred Hitchcock, told this story in a 1939 lecture:
"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."
And then we watch a chain of dramatic events unfold. Some lose their illusions, others their lives. Some relentlessly track and pursue others. An enormous expenditure of resources, energy, and will.
But for what? Hmm, to join the action, you don’t really need to know. The fuss around object X itself is contagious. Hitchcock explains (translated):
"It doesn’t matter what the spies are after. The characters on the screen worry about what they’re after, but the audience don’t care."
Look around: isn’t almost everything in our society built around a MacGuffin? Social media, consumerism, status symbols, likes, fashion, job titles, rankings, titles...
The problem, of course, is not object X itself, but the irresistible desire to get in line for it as the line keeps growing before your eyes.
The key is the feeling: “I don’t have X to begin with,” where X stands for existential emptiness, deficiency, lack.
The mathematical expression “x approaches infinity” captures the essence perfectly. Man’s mistake is trying to fill an infinite lack with something finite.
Do we really want a MacGuffin running our lives?
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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