Does your vagina have taste buds?

Synesthesia in Emma Stone's "Poor Things" (Creative Writing Prompt)

Warning: Spoilers for Poor Things

Emma Stone as Bella Baxter in Poor Things

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The Body + Defamiliarization = The Carnal Uncanny

In Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar nominated film Poor Things Emma Stone plays a woman with a baby’s brain animating her formerly dead body. At the beginning of the film, she is pure id. She rudely speaks her mind, freely masturbates with fruit at the dining room table, and openly leers at a man while being introduced to him. It’s this last point that establishes Bella Baxter as an independent person who is unashamed of her desires, as there is something powerfully feral in the gaze that she controls. This is much different from the trope of the sexualized woman as baby who is framed by the male gaze. I’ll be discussing further points in future posts but feel free to disagree below!

For now, I’d like to discuss two witchy takeaways for creative writing:

1. Defamiliarization + The Body = The Carnal Uncanny = Emma Stone fucking a piece of fruit. One wonders how it tasted to her vagina as studies have indicated sexual organs might have taste buds.¹

2. How you can use synesthesia to bring your creative writing to life because it makes things new and fresh for the reader²

What is synesthesia?

Synesthesia is both a medical condition and a literary device that enchants the reader. As a literary device, it simply means to scramble the senses. You might taste pink, or hear a symphony of trees. This makes your creative writing magical, even though to many witches the world is already alive and communicating. We need simply to tune in.

One of the most famous examples of synesthesia is Rimbaud’s poem “Vowels.”

Here’s the poem in English:

Vowels
By: Rimbaud

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
which buzz around cruel smells,

Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
in anger or in the raptures of penitence;

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]:
–O the Omega! the violet ray of [His] Eyes!

Here are a few more examples of synesthesia from Todd Dillard’s “The Widower’s Wife Takes Him to This Year’s Death Gala”:³

·       “At the gala, skeleton waiters in mausoleum-gray suits accented with scarlet sashes ferry hors d'oeuvres on silver trays—gauzy balls of light that, when eaten, summon fragments of childhoods: skinned knee, red balloon, beach day.”

Synesthesia and Other Techniques to Steal:

There’s multiple layers of synesthesia here as the food itself is defamiliarized as “gauzy balls of light” perhaps because the ghosts can’t eat “real” food.  The “gauzy balls of light” evoke visual images instead of tastes: “skinned knee, red balloon, beach day.”  I might call “skinned knee” touch as well but it’s also visceral pain.  A “red balloon” is mostly a visual image.  “Beach day” is “telling” not “showing” but it seems to evoke multiple other senses: the feeling of sand between your toes, the sun’s warmth on your face, and the smell of the ocean or suntan lotion. As long as you “show” more than you “tell,” some telling is ok and even a good move in order to create clarity of action.

• “Panicked, he bumps into a passing waiter, who drops a tray of shot glasses filled with baby cries—party-goers around him pause as the sounds of weeping bouquet the air…”

Synesthesia and Other Techniques to Steal:

Again taste is replaced with another sense.  In this case it is the sound of “baby cries” and “weeping…”  Notice how he uses the inventive verb “bouquet” and how this contributes to the flower motif from the beginning of the piece.

Prompt:

Write the opening of a flash fiction or non-fiction piece or poem where you use synesthesia.

Word Limit:

500

The Body + Defamiliarization = The Carnal Uncanny

Shorthand: Bella Baxter in Poor Things

I look forward to reading your creative writing below! Do you think Bella Baxter is an independent woman or a sexualized baby? Let me know below. For folks in my current Witch Lit class, feel free to respond with any of our exercises. Just let me know which exercise it is, and add synesthesia.

1. See “Human Genitals Have Taste Buds on Them” by Hank Eng. Medium. Nov. 5, 2021.

2. Many studies have argued that babies and toddlers experience synesthesia.

3. This piece is published in The Dispatch.