I think Will's first post fits with the logic of my last (rushed) post. 'Adopting the mask of the mainstream' means using Hollywood (its generic conventions and its resources) to do something other than Hollywood. Again, Cuaron is not reinventing the avant-garde of surrealism, but he is using formal techniques to raise the issues of the history of our present (i.e., what kind of world are we leaving to our children?), and that is his novelty. 

I don't follow the logic of Will's second post, which seems to equate the historical order of capitalism with language or humanity itself. I can understand the frustrations that capitalism presents to oppositional thinking--it's so difficult to imagine 'real' opposition that evolutionary thinking now presents a more tempting idea than revolutionary thinking--but I think the argument in Will's second post risks ahistoricity (although I like the reading of Speed). 

The issue of historicity may be the best way to answer the persistent challenge of the foreground. The foreground narrative of C of M is diachronous, it develops over time. I have a couple of friends who dislike C of M because they don't see an historical narrative but a theological teleology (which, I argue, the film self-consciously mocks--in the scene where Kee jokes that she has immaculately conceived, we see Theo believe her for a split second before Kee admits that she is joking...the ideological move here would have been to make Kee the believer, not the white, middle-class, modern male). There's no need to go all Joseph Campbell here! That said, if we're going to talk about the plot's development, it makes sense to begin with the ending, with the 'mother of daughter' (I like that, Will) open boat scene and the impending rescue by the 'Tomorrow' vessel. Why does the future depend on getting to a boat named for the future? Tautological? Yep. Heavy-handed? Yes. Cheesy? You bet. But, I ask, wouldn't the cheesiest thing have been to actually see the future (as in the scene from the second Matrix film where we head underground and witness the 'rave' of human freedom--totally ridiculous!)?  

The boat is wildly ambiguous; it's an empty signifier awaiting its referent. What if we read the foreground as a series of sacrafices in faith of this indeterminate, yet radically other, cause? These characters reject the unacceptable state of things in the present (as represented by the background); the only thing that matters is getting the baby to the boat. This represents a purely formal gesture of united resistance, something in the vein of Frederic Jameson's call for anti-anti-utopian thinking. I also realize that it's largely unsatisfying, but one might be asking too much of an aesthetic object to fill in the blanks for the Left.

More determinately, C of M's 'foreground' depiction of the hysterical game of terrorism is much more satisfying. The film's terrorists get caught up in a 'war game' of mutual destruction with the State they oppose. This is where some of the comments in Will's second post may bear the most fruit. When is terrorism really a form opposition and when is it a game of hysterical provocation, or even worse, a teleological stance? In sum, I would tentatively argue that the foreground story of C of M is about drawing the fine line between terroristic 'resistance' and 'something else' (a recognition of the mutual problem, anti-anti-utopian thought, the acknowledgment of the stakes involved, the willingness to die for an indeterminate cause, you fill in the blank). The fine line may be best represented by the difference between Julian, who is connected with the clandestine operation, the 'Human Project', and the rest of the Fishes, who represent a range of types-from the desperate to the ignorantly dangerous.

I would enjoy hearing Mike's thoughts on/reading of the foreground.

best, 
kirk 
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