ABSTRACT
From Songs of Innocence (1789), Blake’s “Nurse’s Song” portrays the poet’s emotions more enduringly than it does the sound of children. In 1973, The Exorcist had a child, Regan, howling “Let Jesus fuck you!” and exhorting a Catholic priest to “stick your cock up her ass, you motherfucking worthless cocksucker!” Between Blake’s reveries and Regan’s blasphemies lie more than mere decades. Their stark contrast maps a mutation of how children are represented-a gulf of meaning. The bridge connecting Blake’s idyll and a child-demon’s gravelly exclamation that “your mother sucks cocks in hell” is the “voices of children.” Although a young girl, Regan’s speech sounds adult and male, effecting her identity’s displacement by demonic possession. Sound is not merely symptomatic, but becomes the very site of the transformation from innocence to obscenity. If horror cinema such as The Exorcist fell into that gap of meaning, then sound pushed it.
