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‘The Infant Kiss’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was inspired by the gothic horror movie The Innocents, which in turn was inspired by Henry James’ novel The Turn Of The Screw. The story is about a governess who believes the ghost of her predecessor’s dead lover is trying to possess the bodies of the children she is looking after. The song was released on the album Never For Ever.
‘The Infant Kiss’ is about a governess. She is torn between the love of an adult man and child who are within the same body.
Kate said in an interview for club newsletter (1980): "It was based on the film, The Innocents. I saw it years ago, when I was very young, and it scared me, and when films scare you as a kid, I think they really hang there. It’s a beautiful film, quite extraordinary. This governess is supposed to look after these children, a little boy and a girl, and they are actually possessed by the spirits of the people who were in the house before. And they keep appearing to the children. It’s really scary – as scary on some levels as the idea of The Exorcist, and that terrified me. The idea of this young girl, speaking and behaving like she did was very disturbing, very distorted. But I quite like that song".
And for radio programme, Paul Gambaccini (1980): "The thing that worries me is the way people have started interpreting that song. They love the long word–paedophilia. It’s not about that at all. It’s not the woman actually fancying the young kid. It’s the woman being attracted by a man inside the child. It just worries me that there were some people catching on to the idea of there being paedophilia, rather than just a distortion of a situation where there’s a perfectly normal, innocent boy with the spirit of a man inside, who’s extremely experienced and lusty. The woman can’t cope with the distortion. She can see that there’s some energy in the child that is not normal, but she can’t place it. Yet she has a very pure maternal love for the child, and it’s only little things like when she goes to give him a kiss at night, that she realizes there is a distortion, and it’s really freaking her out. She doesn’t fancy little boys, she’s got a normal, straight sexual life, yet this thing is happening to her. I really like the distortedness of the situation".
I did not wrote this, this was taken from Kate bush encyclopedia.
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