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POPSThe "MacGuffin" as a plot device (this is tomorrow's word of the day) The MacGuffin (the term was popularized by Hitchcock) is the vaguely-defined object that all the characters in a thriller are trying to get -- you know, the mysterious briefcase, or the cache of jewels, or whatever. Adapted by Slavoj Zizek into his Lacanian theory of jouissance (the "objet petit a" is the MacGuffin). The first word of the day was "interpellation."