User:Emily/proposal final draft

Proposal I

Fantasy-Objects

Introduction

A MacGuffin is used as a plot device in fiction films in the form of a goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues and moves the plot forward. I am interested in MacGuffin, precisely the MacGuffin effect. According to Zizek, "the MacGuffin is the purest case of what Lacan calls objet petit a: a pure void which functions as the object - cause of desire. That would be then the precise definition of the real object: a cause which in itself does not exist - which is present only in a series of effects, but always in a distorted, displaced way. If the Real is the impossible, it is precisely this impossibility which is to be grasped through its effects." The effect of MacGuffin in fiction films maybe easier to grasp, however it may be harder to perceive in the representation of our daily commodities, events which are mediated in different ways. In the work, I attempt to exchange the context of the MacGuffin from fiction to reality and vice versa, in order to reveal less visible mechanism of soft control. MacGuffin plays between fiction and reality, implies "the protagonist is an emblem of the human subject in an abstract representation." MacGuffins are “material metaphors” they have a “reality effect”.

Description of Project(s)

Part I

This part comes from my own obsession with MacGuffin objects which are popularized by Hitchcock. It will comprised in two different parts. On one hand, some of the MacGuffin Objects will be reproduced in a uniform way (3d print), they will be taken out of film and presented in reality. Additionally, I will make a series of short videos replacing the object with my own belongings.

Check gathered material.

For a further practice: I plan to make a video installation. (live cinema?)

Please refer to the sketch

Audiences are invited to put their own objects (any objects that they have with themselves at that moment, namely keys, phones, glasses, purses, rings, pens) inside of the installation. This will trigger a sequence of moving images shown in the screen/computer in front. A camera is mounted on the back of the screen in order to take photos of the objects, which will also be present in the sequence of moving images on the screen together with protagonists' reactions. The moving images are extracted from Hitchcock’s typical shots, namely, vertigo shots, montage sequence of some intense scenario, close-up emotion shots. The backside will be a light box for capturing better images of the objects.
The installation will focus on their core feature which is the void. They can only be presented in a series of effects. Here I will simplify them as a sequence of typical shots. MacGuffins are interchangeable in films. To capture this feature, and to get spectators involved in the work, I want to dramatize the objects we possess in an ironic and playful way. It is a reflection of how our mundane objects can be mediated in daily media and invite people to think what is presence and absence here.

Part II

In my research, there will be a parallel collection of MacGuffin both in films and in reality. It serves as extended backup, not only include these physical MacGuffins but also those in an abstract from. The collection consists of moving-images, audio and text, for further study on how the desired are delivered and what patterns are embedded in. What is absent and present is the key to pinpoint the lack. The research will end up with a webpage, with voice guidance narrating the presence and absence information. More thoughts on present the research, check previous proposal.
List of MacGuffin

Relation to Previous Works

In the last academic year, I have been working on manipulation of audiovisual content (mainly cinematic materials), examining how could it alter the way of seeing. My work started in a quite simple manner, in which films are utilised as input to produce books (link), videos (link), browser- based works(link), and interactive installations(link). Through these works, different accessibilities are provided and meanwhile doubts are bought forward on the ability of recognition - namely the ability to recognise time and space, fiction and fact. ! Starting from my interest in video editing, the practice and research brought me back to think about montage, but in a much broader and freer manner. I started to research the “cut-up” techniques through different times, from literature to cinema works and data manipulations. All these works are more or less leave a space for the “performativity” inherited from their original materials. ! Departing from the exploration of performativity, I considered about the control on the works like for example from Gysin, which I thought at first, were freedom. Interestingly, the control mechanism is to hardwire conceptual frame with technologies, which later on may translate to be (standard) code. The materials to feed perception become layered and less visible. It brings the question on what this control would affect on cognition, from both human level and machine level (or the architecture of technology).

Relation to larger context

The name "MacGuffin" appears to originate in 20th-century filmmaking, and was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock in the 1930s. He often quoted the following story to illustrate its nothingness: "Two gentlemen meet on a train, and the one is struck by the extraordinary package being carried by the other. He asks his companion, 'What is in that unusual package you are carrying there?' The other man replies, 'That is a MacGuffin.' 'What is a MacGuffin?' asks the first. The second says, 'A MacGuffin is a device used for killing leopards in the Scottish highlands.' Naturally the first man says, 'But there are no leopards in the Scottish highlands.' 'Well,' says the second, 'then that's not a MacGuffin, is it?’” In Zizek’s book The Sublime Object, he mentioned another version of the story, which is much more to the point: It is the same as the other, with the exception of the last answer: “Well, you see how efficient it is!” - “that’s MacGuffin, a pure nothing which is none the less efficient. Donald Spoto who is an American biographer and theologian, once pointed out that “There’s a blot to look for in Hitchcock’s film, but watch out for the MacGuffin. It will lead you to nowhere.” The MacGuffin in itself is a pure void, but it is the pure void that holds the “big Other”.  Zizek find this pretext, a Macguffin in the real world. The “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” fit perfectly the status of MacGuffin. “As such, they(WMD) by definition cannot ever be found, and are therefore all the more dangerous... Now that none were found, we reached the last line of the story of MacGuffin: "'Well,' said President Bush in September 2003, 'then that's not a MacGuffin, is it?'"”

That sounds might be the most dramatized scenario in reality. The government controlled the discourse; we all are like the actors in that performance. The only difference is there were real war, people died. The pure void presents only in a serious of effects. “Not its symbolic interpretation but the experience of the fact that the fantasy-object, by its fascinating presence, is merely filling out a lack, a void in the Other. The fantasy is a construction whose function is to hide this void.

Reference

• The Prisoner's Dilemma
• Knowledge as a flow and a thing
• The Sublime Object of Ideology, p163
• http://www.lacan.com/iraq1.htm
• How to read Lacan, Zizek p133
• Hitchcock's 1962 interview with Francois Truffaut
• Hitchcock's June 8, 1972 appearance on the Dick Cavett Show
• Johan Grimonprez on Hitchcock and Television
• The Purloined Letter (the letter is hidden in the open)