Inorganic plot devices
11-25-09 | 05:01 PM
#1
Thread Starter
DVD Talk Special Edition
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 1,232
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
From: Portland, Oregon
Inorganic plot devices
We've all seen movies with moments that exist just to further the plot. They're unnecessary, they're forced, they're illogical. The filmmakers know what they want to happen, and where they want to end up, but they don't appear to spend enough time with the story to avoid such developments.
In The Santa Clause 2 (not the greatest example, but it's off the top of my head), there was no need for the Toy Santa. His purpose was to keep running the North Pole while Scott Calvin was away. But Bernard, his second-in-command, said that he would be able to maintain operations in his absence, and he was right.
The real reason for the Toy Santa was to create conflict, of course, but the stated reason was a plot hole, in my estimation.
I'm sure there are more interesting examples.
--THX
In The Santa Clause 2 (not the greatest example, but it's off the top of my head), there was no need for the Toy Santa. His purpose was to keep running the North Pole while Scott Calvin was away. But Bernard, his second-in-command, said that he would be able to maintain operations in his absence, and he was right.
The real reason for the Toy Santa was to create conflict, of course, but the stated reason was a plot hole, in my estimation.
I'm sure there are more interesting examples.
--THX
11-25-09 | 05:07 PM
#2
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Inorganic plot devices
aren't these called McGuffins?
11-25-09 | 11:12 PM
#6
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Inorganic plot devices
11-26-09 | 07:35 PM
#10
Senior Member
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 603
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
From: Pekin, IL
Re: Inorganic plot devices
Marnie- the unlocked cellar window, flapping in the continuous gale, to which the camera keeps returning. But as the threat is never going to come from there, nor from the tree-branch (or is it a would-be intruder?!) brushing against an upstairs window, such things are really just emotion-arousing and the source of unnerving sound-effects! (Compare the cat's miaows from the cellar before it finally uses the unlocked window to escape and then - improbably - climb the aforementioned tree in the storm!) At the beginning and end of the show, host Alfred Hitchcock demonstrates the making of typical sound-effects used in his profession - though both times these soon take on an inexplicable life of their own.
Spellbound- Spellbound has a pair of MacGuffins that are practically fused with its love story. When John Ballantyne’s (Gregory Peck) amnesia is cured, both he and his lover-physician Constance (Ingrid Bergman) achieve self-discovery and attain a mate. The other MacGuffin, the unmasking of Dr. Edwardes’ real killer, restores the protagonists to each other’s embraces.
Foreign Correspondent- Clause 27
Rebecca-the mystery surrounding someone who is no longer living and, more importantly, is never seen in the film, even in flashbacks.
And I think you're right about Saboteur, but other wise I just owned the shit out of you.
11-26-09 | 07:51 PM
#11
DVD Talk Gold Edition
Joined: Feb 2009
Posts: 2,504
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
From: United States
11-26-09 | 08:38 PM
#15
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Inorganic plot devices
Give you that one.
And how exactly is that a MacGuffin? That's a building suspense, creating tone and atmosphere.
Again, NOT MacGuffins. Those are plot developments. That's like saying the revelation of Norman's mother is a MacGuffin. MacGuffin's are by nature fundamentally useless to driving the narrative. Amnesia that leads to self-discovery is not a MacGuffin; it's story. George Kaplan in NxNW is a MacGuffin. Roger Thornhill using the Kaplan identity as a catalyst to shirking his Madision Avenue persona and domineering mother? NOT a MacGuffin.
Debatable but I won't make a federal case out of it.
Exactly why it's not a MacGuffin. That's the damn plot, son.
You got 2 out of 5 son, after claiming EVERY HITCHCOCK FILM has one. And OH NOES I got "owned" 
by an Internet movie geek! With a 40% average, no less! Someone hand him a prize 
(At least until he posts a bunch of new pedantic insults that get deleted by mods.)
Marnie- the unlocked cellar window, flapping in the continuous gale, to which the camera keeps returning. But as the threat is never going to come from there, nor from the tree-branch (or is it a would-be intruder?!) brushing against an upstairs window, such things are really just emotion-arousing and the source of unnerving sound-effects! (Compare the cat's miaows from the cellar before it finally uses the unlocked window to escape and then - improbably - climb the aforementioned tree in the storm!) At the beginning and end of the show, host Alfred Hitchcock demonstrates the making of typical sound-effects used in his profession - though both times these soon take on an inexplicable life of their own.
Spellbound- Spellbound has a pair of MacGuffins that are practically fused with its love story. When John Ballantyne’s (Gregory Peck) amnesia is cured, both he and his lover-physician Constance (Ingrid Bergman) achieve self-discovery and attain a mate. The other MacGuffin, the unmasking of Dr. Edwardes’ real killer, restores the protagonists to each other’s embraces.
Foreign Correspondent- Clause 27
Rebecca-the mystery surrounding someone who is no longer living and, more importantly, is never seen in the film, even in flashbacks.
And I think you're right about Saboteur, but other wise I just owned the shit out of you.
by an Internet movie geek! With a 40% average, no less! Someone hand him a prize (At least until he posts a bunch of new pedantic insults that get deleted by mods.)
11-26-09 | 09:10 PM
#18
Senior Member
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 603
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
From: Pekin, IL
Re: Inorganic plot devices
Macguffin, a plot device that has no specific meaning or purpose other than to advance the story; any situation that motivates the action of a film either artificially or substantively; also written http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/McGuffin
Marnie- the cellar window is much like the license plate in Psycho, diverting attention from the audience/ but having no particulair relevance to the outcome of the story.
Spellbound- http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/224, also to quote David Boyd's wonderful essay on Spellbound, "Wittingly or unwittingly, Spellbound taps into this same uncertainty. The images of Ballantine's dream, for instance, on the one hand "coincide point-for-point to 'real' events," as Andrew Britton says, "as if they were empirical clues" (clues, that is, to a "material reality"), and, on the other, unmistakably point toward the oedipal fantasy (or "psychical reality") underlying the film (80). It is, in fact, this uncertainty about just how much of the fault for our lives lies in our stars (or at least in our circumstances) and how much in ourselves, rather than Ballantine's guilt or innocence (surely the merest of MacGuffins), which provides Spellbound with the real focus of its narrative mystery. Consequently, if the fantasy material of the film, with its familiar parental figures and Oedipal guilt, sometimes verges on the banal, Hitchcock's narrative manipulation of that material can nevertheless be seen, not merely, as Andrew Britton contends, as the product of ideological confusion, but rather as reenacting a central and tenaciously unresolved conflict in Freud's own thought. And for that reason Spellbound has to be seen, like so many of Hitchcock's films, and indeed like psychoanalysis itself, with parted eye."
Rebecca to quote http://www.lee.edu/~jhamby/pdf/huma/Rebecca.pdf," Rebecca makes great use of Hitchcock’s concept of the MacGuffin, something pursued by
characters in the film but having little meaning to the audience or relevance to the film except as
a plot contrivance." (which is exactly what Rebecca herself resembles in the film)
Playing by the the rules established by Hitchcock, as well as that of the english language dictionary, I do believe that you sir, have just been bested. Now, good day!
Marnie- the cellar window is much like the license plate in Psycho, diverting attention from the audience/ but having no particulair relevance to the outcome of the story.
Spellbound- http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/224, also to quote David Boyd's wonderful essay on Spellbound, "Wittingly or unwittingly, Spellbound taps into this same uncertainty. The images of Ballantine's dream, for instance, on the one hand "coincide point-for-point to 'real' events," as Andrew Britton says, "as if they were empirical clues" (clues, that is, to a "material reality"), and, on the other, unmistakably point toward the oedipal fantasy (or "psychical reality") underlying the film (80). It is, in fact, this uncertainty about just how much of the fault for our lives lies in our stars (or at least in our circumstances) and how much in ourselves, rather than Ballantine's guilt or innocence (surely the merest of MacGuffins), which provides Spellbound with the real focus of its narrative mystery. Consequently, if the fantasy material of the film, with its familiar parental figures and Oedipal guilt, sometimes verges on the banal, Hitchcock's narrative manipulation of that material can nevertheless be seen, not merely, as Andrew Britton contends, as the product of ideological confusion, but rather as reenacting a central and tenaciously unresolved conflict in Freud's own thought. And for that reason Spellbound has to be seen, like so many of Hitchcock's films, and indeed like psychoanalysis itself, with parted eye."
Rebecca to quote http://www.lee.edu/~jhamby/pdf/huma/Rebecca.pdf," Rebecca makes great use of Hitchcock’s concept of the MacGuffin, something pursued by
characters in the film but having little meaning to the audience or relevance to the film except as
a plot contrivance." (which is exactly what Rebecca herself resembles in the film)
Playing by the the rules established by Hitchcock, as well as that of the english language dictionary, I do believe that you sir, have just been bested. Now, good day!
Last edited by gglass4269; 11-26-09 at 09:14 PM.
11-26-09 | 09:32 PM
#19
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Inorganic plot devices
Like arguing with a bilge pump. Reminiscent of the salad days of the mid/late 1990s, explaining to tweenie girls that "ironic" does not mean "a great big massive bummer". An exercise in futility if there ever was one. Good day to you too, sir. And Baba Booey to you all.
11-26-09 | 09:42 PM
#20
Senior Member
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 603
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
From: Pekin, IL
Re: Inorganic plot devices
Like arguing with a bilge pump. Reminiscent of the salad days of the mid/late 1990s, explaining to tweenie girls that "ironic" does not mean "a great big massive bummer". An exercise in futility if there ever was one. Good day to you too, sir. And Baba Booey to you all.
really, did you just use the word son while trying to sound smart and educated? also, you're not disagreeing with me at this point, your having conflicted views with well established film critics, not some tween teenybopper on a dvd site. also, I think your just mad that for once your wrong, you just don't want to admit it. you pull this same kind of schtick in every other thread, and karma just made its presence known. now to quote Howard Dean....
"BEEEEEEE-YAHHHHHHHHH"
(owned)
11-26-09 | 09:52 PM
#21
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Inorganic plot devices
Exactly the sentiments one would have if they just got owned, son
really, did you just use the word son while trying to sound smart and educated? also, you're not disagreeing with me at this point, your having conflicted views with well established film critics, not some tween teenybopper on a dvd site. also, I think your just mad that for once your wrong, you just don't want to admit it. you pull this same kind of schtick in every other thread, and karma just made its presence known. now to quote Howard Dean....
"BEEEEEEE-YAHHHHHHHHH"
(owned)
really, did you just use the word son while trying to sound smart and educated? also, you're not disagreeing with me at this point, your having conflicted views with well established film critics, not some tween teenybopper on a dvd site. also, I think your just mad that for once your wrong, you just don't want to admit it. you pull this same kind of schtick in every other thread, and karma just made its presence known. now to quote Howard Dean....
"BEEEEEEE-YAHHHHHHHHH"
(owned)
Stay down.
Last edited by Hokeyboy; 11-26-09 at 09:56 PM.
