Penelope lies on a cold marble couch in the corner of a small village church in the north of England, six years old and apparently sleeping. Hundreds of miles away a portrait of her father hangs in a museum in London – an eighteenth century gentleman reclining in a grove of 20 oaks. In his hand there is a soft leather bound volume inscribed with a single word – “Rousseau”.
Rousseau’s Daughter will be a cinematic work that will deal with the dangerous power of ideals and the limitations of pure reason. It will center on the death of Penelope Boothby (1786 – 1791) and her father’s belief in the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory of the child as the most pure and uncorrupted of savages. It will deal in contradictions: although Rousseau had written the most influential book on child rearing of his age he had never raised a child, in fact he had consigned all five of his illegitimate children to the Paris Foundlings Hospital at a time when 95% of such babies died there. Sir Brooke Boothby, by contrast, adored his only child. As a follower of Rousseau he would have considered himself a progressive and well-informed parent. However, his belief in the power of theoretical reasoning could not protect him from the loss of his child. He spent the rest of his life memorializing Penelope, most famously by commissioning an eerily realistic marble memorial for her tomb.
This project will address Rousseau’s philosophy as the foundation of the romantic view of nature as well as the origin point of Primitivism, a problematic and Eurocentric thread running through modernist culture. Rousseau’s world view was clearly a reaction against the artificiality of the prevailing culture, but at the same time it retained many disturbing assumptions about otherness which remained in place throughout the subsequent development of modernism. In Rousseau’s philosophy otherness may be seen as not limited merely to non-European cultures, but to include gender (the non-male) and age (the non-adult).
Rousseau’s Daughter will tell the story of the strange year that Rousseau spent in hiding in a remote mansion in the provinces of northern England and the friendship that he developed with his neighbor, Sir Brooke Boothby. It will present a non-linear dream-like narrative using a heightened version of eighteenth-century aesthetics. It will be a hybrid of live action cinema, hand drawn animation and digital special effects. Sir Brooke Boothby’s portrait session will be recreated, reclining in a CGI grove, as will Penelope’s tomb, once England’s most famous monument to a dead child. Neo-classical palaces will be haunted by “Jack in the Green” and the other wild-men of Europe’s past. Actors dressed as eighteenth century aristocrats will dance in photorealistic camouflage. Their masks will reference the so-called “primitive” traditions which inspired the great masters of modernism. However, these masks will be reimagined using the gilded Rococo forms of acanthus and arabesque. Children will literally emerge from nature, and return to it once more. Primitivistic masterpieces of modern art will be recreated in eighteenth century settings. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon à la Fragonard.
Rousseau’s Daughter is currently in production.
Penelope lies on a cold marble couch in the corner of a small village church in the north of England, six years old and apparently sleeping. Hundreds of miles away a portrait of her father hangs in a museum in London – an eighteenth century gentleman reclining in a grove of 20 oaks. In his hand there is a soft leather bound volume inscribed with a single word – “Rousseau”.
Rousseau’s Daughter will be a cinematic work that will deal with the dangerous power of ideals and the limitations of pure reason. It will center on the death of Penelope Boothby (1786 – 1791) and her father’s belief in the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory of the child as the most pure and uncorrupted of savages. It will deal in contradictions: although Rousseau had written the most influential book on child rearing of his age he had never raised a child, in fact he had consigned all five of his illegitimate children to the Paris Foundlings Hospital at a time when 95% of such babies died there. Sir Brooke Boothby, by contrast, adored his only child. As a follower of Rousseau he would have considered himself a progressive and well-informed parent. However, his belief in the power of theoretical reasoning could not protect him from the loss of his child. He spent the rest of his life memorializing Penelope, most famously by commissioning an eerily realistic marble memorial for her tomb.
This project will address Rousseau’s philosophy as the foundation of the romantic view of nature as well as the origin point of Primitivism, a problematic and Eurocentric thread running through modernist culture. Rousseau’s world view was clearly a reaction against the artificiality of the prevailing culture, but at the same time it retained many disturbing assumptions about otherness which remained in place throughout the subsequent development of modernism. In Rousseau’s philosophy otherness may be seen as not limited merely to non-European cultures, but to include gender (the non-male) and age (the non-adult).
Rousseau’s Daughter will tell the story of the strange year that Rousseau spent in hiding in a remote mansion in the provinces of northern England and the friendship that he developed with his neighbor, Sir Brooke Boothby. It will present a non-linear dream-like narrative using a heightened version of eighteenth-century aesthetics. It will be a hybrid of live action cinema, hand drawn animation and digital special effects. Sir Brooke Boothby’s portrait session will be recreated, reclining in a CGI grove, as will Penelope’s tomb, once England’s most famous monument to a dead child. Neo-classical palaces will be haunted by “Jack in the Green” and the other wild-men of Europe’s past. Actors dressed as eighteenth century aristocrats will dance in photorealistic camouflage. Their masks will reference the so-called “primitive” traditions which inspired the great masters of modernism. However, these masks will be reimagined using the gilded Rococo forms of acanthus and arabesque. Children will literally emerge from nature, and return to it once more. Primitivistic masterpieces of modern art will be recreated in eighteenth century settings. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon à la Fragonard.
Rousseau’s Daughter is currently in production.
