Discourse on sex, gender and individuality in Flying and Fear of Flying
Flying. Confessions of free woman - documentaries by Jennifer Fox (2007)
Fear of Flying - book by Erica Jong (1974)
The narrations of Isadora Wing's and Jennifer Fox's life stories are just as similar as they are polar. What we have in the book and the documentaries are different perspectives on the women's search of self-identification and self-characterization. They're both depicting themeselves as women (each one by her own means: literary and visually), while trying to find out what it is like to be one. Both reader and spectator has a chance to be plunged into a complex net of heroines' relations with the opposite sex; to acknowledge their dualism, complications and frustrations. We explore characters' thoughts and senses (again by different means: mostly by psychoanalysis in case of Isadora and by the long ingenuous conversations with friends in Jennifer's narration) and watch them solving their «identity problems». And here it is, where the differences begin.
Comparing to Isadora's story, Jennifer's one seems to be reverse. What the first woman is trying to find and adopt to herself: the liberation, the space for creativity, the freedom of choice, and the endlessness of possibilities; the second woman has taken for granted. Jennifer is a liberated middle-aged woman, who has never been married, who has an independent carrier of a film-maker and travel around the whole world as free as a bird. What she questions and interrogates is her own independence and liberation, paralleling her lifestyle and beliefs with those of women all around the world, she's attempting to find out where are the limits for «zipless fucks» (whereas Isadora is searching for a single one for herself), where (if anywhere) should female weakness and dependence begin.
If categorazing the fashion of both stories, one can say that it's is the opposition of liberation and backlash, to some extent, feminism and postfeminism. Though I find it really hard to define the term «postfeminism», the concept itself is very appropriate for the discourse on gender in the documentaries.
On the one hand, it can be interpreted as the matter of different time epoches. The women of 60s and early 70s were in search for free spirit, were trying to cast off chains of marriage, and dedicate themselves to the lifelong process of creativity instead of bringing up children. They might have immersed back then, they might have exaggerated. To deny sex differences and to deny to give birth is not exactly a reconceptualization of gender roles, rather than neglecting of them. If women of 60s made a «gender mistake», then modern 21st century women should correct them and resume life's normal course.
On the other hand, postfeminism might be apprehended as a different concept of self-formation. Isadora's identity is constructed by the presence of a man, a husband. That's why her lifestory is told as an alternated love affairs, that's why in the end of the book, while talking to herself and being herself's psychoanalist, she asks: «Why is being alone so terrible?» and answeres: «Because if no man loves me I have no identity» (Jong, p. 302). That's where the feminists' struggle against female dependence began, but to my mind, where it began, the feminist politics failed. To distinguish genders from each other is to acknowledge the existence of inequality of some sort or another. Thus there is no parity within the frameworks of feminism, there is always a chance of exaggerating or reversing: declaring women's liberation, feminists endowed female with male roles and characteristics, which made no differences at all. The gender problems remained the same, it's only the meaning of word «woman», which has changed.
New ways of thinking about gender and selves should be permeated. We might take a look on Isadora's and Jennifer's identities as something constructed by the freedom of choices and possibilities, which to some extent means that there are no «material Isadora» and «no material Jennifer» behind their actions and choices. That is exactly how Erica Jong's heroine attempts to see herself: «I tried to examine my physical self, to take stock so that I could remember who I was - if indeed my body could be said to be me» (Jong, p. 311). The idea perfectly suits Butler's conception of «no doer behind the deed» (Butler, p.34) and appears to my mind to be a great social structure. The structure appropriate for what Spengler called «Faustian civilization», where a human being is a self-sufficient and self-completed [People couldn't complete us. We complete ourselves (Jong, p. 328)] proud and lonely fighter for the unattainable, who knows that the goal can never be reached and still strives hard and tirelessly.
Fear of Flying - book by Erica Jong (1974)
The narrations of Isadora Wing's and Jennifer Fox's life stories are just as similar as they are polar. What we have in the book and the documentaries are different perspectives on the women's search of self-identification and self-characterization. They're both depicting themeselves as women (each one by her own means: literary and visually), while trying to find out what it is like to be one. Both reader and spectator has a chance to be plunged into a complex net of heroines' relations with the opposite sex; to acknowledge their dualism, complications and frustrations. We explore characters' thoughts and senses (again by different means: mostly by psychoanalysis in case of Isadora and by the long ingenuous conversations with friends in Jennifer's narration) and watch them solving their «identity problems». And here it is, where the differences begin.
Comparing to Isadora's story, Jennifer's one seems to be reverse. What the first woman is trying to find and adopt to herself: the liberation, the space for creativity, the freedom of choice, and the endlessness of possibilities; the second woman has taken for granted. Jennifer is a liberated middle-aged woman, who has never been married, who has an independent carrier of a film-maker and travel around the whole world as free as a bird. What she questions and interrogates is her own independence and liberation, paralleling her lifestyle and beliefs with those of women all around the world, she's attempting to find out where are the limits for «zipless fucks» (whereas Isadora is searching for a single one for herself), where (if anywhere) should female weakness and dependence begin.
If categorazing the fashion of both stories, one can say that it's is the opposition of liberation and backlash, to some extent, feminism and postfeminism. Though I find it really hard to define the term «postfeminism», the concept itself is very appropriate for the discourse on gender in the documentaries.
On the one hand, it can be interpreted as the matter of different time epoches. The women of 60s and early 70s were in search for free spirit, were trying to cast off chains of marriage, and dedicate themselves to the lifelong process of creativity instead of bringing up children. They might have immersed back then, they might have exaggerated. To deny sex differences and to deny to give birth is not exactly a reconceptualization of gender roles, rather than neglecting of them. If women of 60s made a «gender mistake», then modern 21st century women should correct them and resume life's normal course.
On the other hand, postfeminism might be apprehended as a different concept of self-formation. Isadora's identity is constructed by the presence of a man, a husband. That's why her lifestory is told as an alternated love affairs, that's why in the end of the book, while talking to herself and being herself's psychoanalist, she asks: «Why is being alone so terrible?» and answeres: «Because if no man loves me I have no identity» (Jong, p. 302). That's where the feminists' struggle against female dependence began, but to my mind, where it began, the feminist politics failed. To distinguish genders from each other is to acknowledge the existence of inequality of some sort or another. Thus there is no parity within the frameworks of feminism, there is always a chance of exaggerating or reversing: declaring women's liberation, feminists endowed female with male roles and characteristics, which made no differences at all. The gender problems remained the same, it's only the meaning of word «woman», which has changed.
New ways of thinking about gender and selves should be permeated. We might take a look on Isadora's and Jennifer's identities as something constructed by the freedom of choices and possibilities, which to some extent means that there are no «material Isadora» and «no material Jennifer» behind their actions and choices. That is exactly how Erica Jong's heroine attempts to see herself: «I tried to examine my physical self, to take stock so that I could remember who I was - if indeed my body could be said to be me» (Jong, p. 311). The idea perfectly suits Butler's conception of «no doer behind the deed» (Butler, p.34) and appears to my mind to be a great social structure. The structure appropriate for what Spengler called «Faustian civilization», where a human being is a self-sufficient and self-completed [People couldn't complete us. We complete ourselves (Jong, p. 328)] proud and lonely fighter for the unattainable, who knows that the goal can never be reached and still strives hard and tirelessly.