1/8
The writer Erica Jong in her penthouse in a scene in the documentary by Zurich director Kaspar Kasics.
Karen ScharerEditor society
In Switzerland, women had only just been given the right to vote. In the USA in 1973, the sexual fantasies of a heroine caused red heads. It’s unheard of for a woman to play erotic mind games at all – and then other things like that: protagonist Isadora Wing imagines fast, non-committal, great sex. 50 years ago, writer Erica Jong (80) entered territory previously reserved for male authors such as Henry Miller and Philip Roth.
Erica Jong had assumed that her manuscript would never be published, so she wrote uninhibitedly. But she was wrong: a publisher was found.
The New Yorker Erica Jong was 31 years old when her debut novel “Fear of Flying” startled puritanical America.
The novel “Fear of Flying” by the then 31-year-old daughter of an artist couple, married twice, transported feminist concerns directly into the living rooms and bedrooms of puritan American households.
Star status thanks to the first novel
Since then, the novel about a woman who breaks out of her marriage to lead an independent life has sold over 37 million copies. It has been translated into more than 45 languages. Erica Jong’s neologism “zipless fuck” was adopted as a term for anonymous sex.
This first novel, which was as celebrated as it was frowned upon, overshadowed her later work, some 25 books, including poetry and non-fiction. With the novel she gained economic independence; the worldwide success made her a feminist icon and an illustrious figure in the New York cultural scene.
sexuality in old age
The German-language press was also always interested in Erica Jong, the last time when she not only helped her first novel character Isadora Wing to make a comeback with “Fear of Dying” in 2015, but also broke a taboo again: she made the sexual desire of older women Theme.
Documentary filmmaker Kaspar Kasics (70) came across this last novel by chance. “She surprised me how witty and clever she wrote about her parents who didn’t want to die,” says the Zurich native. His curiosity was piqued, and when he realized that there was no documentary about this extraordinary woman who had been seen on television around the world, his decision was made. His film “Erica Jong – Breaking the Wall” was shown at the Locarno Film Festival in 2022, is now showing in Swiss cinemas and in spring in Germany and the USA.
Cinematic portrait of an indefatigable woman
Anyone who watches the film gets to know Erica Jong – now a grandmother of four and married to divorce lawyer Ken Burrows (81) for more than 30 years – as a smart, humorous, well-groomed person. She lives in a penthouse full of art and books in New York’s fashionable Upper East Side.
In Kaspar Kasic’s film, Erica Jong does fitness exercises in the park, guided by a personal trainer. She wears a T-shirt from the judge and women’s rights activist Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020.
Her two king poodles are picked up for a walk, an employee works in the kitchen, an assistant supports her in developing her autobiography, a personal trainer guides her in fitness in the park. She spends time with her family, performs as a speaker, supports budding authors. Your health is good; her husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis has not yet had a major impact on their life together.
She is still fearless and combative. She is driven to shake people up, she says in the film. And she doesn’t want to rest anyway. “Grandmothers should be in power,” she wrote in an email exchange with the Sunday Blick magazine. Grandmothers have a clear view of what has changed in the past few decades and what still needs to change. They have the whole of humanity in mind and would also identify with both genders. A world in which grandmothers instead of grandfathers hold important political positions would be a very different world, writes Erica Jong. “I wouldn’t throw out the grandfathers, but give the grandmothers a lot more power and influence.”
Impressive historical recordings
Women were less heard in the 1970s than they are today. If a young woman washed it up on the big talk shows, it could happen that she was lectured and shamed by male moderators. This is shown by recordings from that time that Kaspar Kasics edited into his film.
For example: On a talk show, Erica Jong points out the interviewer’s double standards. “Why shouldn’t women swear when men do it too?” she asks him. “Women can’t urinate upright either,” he replies, shaking his hand fiercely, receiving applause from the audience and a standing ovation from the studio band.
Another presenter says she is to blame for women feeling sexual desire. Erica Jong responds that this is one of the things that generations of women have had to suppress.
Erica Jong became world famous with her novel “Fear of Flying”. In the film, she says the fame, attention, and temptations almost led to self-destruction.
Such were the times when Erica Jong became a public figure in her early 30s. Her voice gave a tremendous boost to feminist causes. Ten years later, in another talk show, she summarized the social changes as follows: Women can now have everything, have children, earn a living. The result: “We are all constantly tired!”
being a woman as a disadvantage
A condition that many women will probably know a few decades later. How does Erica Jong assess the situation of young women today? She writes by email that progress has been made. “Further disadvantages for women were uncovered. But not all yet.” She herself became aware of the prejudices against women in her twenties. “Women’s work has not been viewed impartially as human work, but always as a woman’s work,” she writes.
So had her mother, the most talented painter in art school. She wasn’t promoted because she was a woman. She finally gave up her artistic career.
The fact that “Fear of Flying” was written by a woman had a major impact on how it was received: the novel was perceived as a sex book. The underlying theme of self-empowerment was hidden. “It shocked me that some people saw it as a dirty book,” says Erica Jong to documentary filmmaker Kaspar Kasics.
radical honesty
The perceived injustices propelled Erica Jong to keep going. She wanted nothing less than to change the world. Her means: radical honesty. “Telling the truth about our lives is a way to become free,” she says.
She sees herself as a chronicler of a woman’s life and works tirelessly to make unheard female voices heard. The fact that this New Yorker still has something to say herself – the public owes this realization to the film portrait by Kaspar Kasics.