Hitch and his McGuffins (was: Red Flags, Red Herrings)

[joym999 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 19165

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Caius Marcius" <coriolan at w...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Haggridd" <jkusalavagemd at y...> wrote:
> > --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> > > Joywitch wrote:
> > > 
> > > >But have there been any red herrings so far, i.e. items 
> mentioned 
> > > briefly that 
> > > >later turned out to be UNimportant?  
> 
> There is a very interesting reference in Chapter One of PS/SS
> 
> "And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the 
> nation's owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although 
owls 
> normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there 
> have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every 
> direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls 
> have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern." The newscaster 
allowed 
> himself a grin. "Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin 
with 
> the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?"
> 
> Jim "McGuffin?" Hmmm.
> 
> Anyone Hitchcock fans out there? Titles like "Strangers on a Train,"
> "Spellbound," "The Birds," "The Trouble With Harry," "The Wrong 
Man," 
> (i.e., Sirius), "Rich and Strange," (i.e., Draco), "I 
Confess,"(i.e., 
> Wormtail, certainly resonate with Potter-esque overtones. 
"MacGuffin" 
> was a term that Hitch used for what he intended as his red herrings 
> (e.g., the stolen money in Psycho, Laurence Olivier's supposed 
> attachment to his late wife in Rebecca) that were intended to draw 
> attention away from what the story was really about.  And the above 
> paragraph certainly suggests Hitchcock's legendary 1962 esaay of 
> avian terror.

Wow. Brilliant catch, CMC.  Somehow I can believe that JKR is a big 
Hitchcock fan.  It fits with my idea of her personality, but dont ask 
me why.  But did Hitchcock really mean the term MacGuffin to mean red 
herring?  I thought his MacGuffins were more of a plot device -- the 
thing that everyone is looking for, which in and of itself is 
unimportant but is meaningful to the characters.  A red herring is 
more of a false clue.

Amys list of red herrings was pretty good -- like the false clue that 
Fred and George were up to no good in GoF, same with Percy in CoS, 
etc.  I guess JKR does sprinkle the text with red herrings and I was 
too dumb to notice.

But JKR does have her MacGuffins, too.  The Philosophers Stone itself 
is a kind of a MacGuffin -- we never really see it, we dont really 
know what it is (historically its not a stone at all), the stone 
itself is unimportant except that EVERYBODY wants it.

--Joywitch