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Universitas Fajar, Makassar, Indonesia
Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media

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TRAUMA, DISSOCIATION, AND CINEMATIC AMPLIFICATION IN SPLIT: A HERMAN-INFORMED ANALYSIS OF KEVIN WENDELL CRUMB Bahar; Dahlia Husain; Ana Mariana
Indonesian EFL Journal Vol. 12 No. 3 (2026)
Publisher : University of Kuningan

Show Abstract | Download Original | Original Source | Check in Google Scholar | DOI: 10.25134/ieflj.v12i3.180

Abstract

This study examines how psychological trauma and dissociation are represented through Kevin Wendell Crumb in M. Night Shyamalan's Split using Judith Herman's trauma framework. Treating the film as a cultural text rather than a clinical case, it combines theory-driven thematic analysis with semiotic attention to selected scenes, dialogue, performance, and recurring visual cues. The analysis focuses on Herman's clusters of hyperarousal, intrusion, and constriction and on the film's use of childhood maltreatment as narrative explanation. The findings show that hyperarousal is constructed through vigilance, ritualised control, and aggression; intrusion through cue-triggered and fragmented returns of childhood memory; and constriction through affective narrowing, detachment, and rigid survival roles. Sustained childhood physical abuse is foregrounded as the dominant explanatory past, while other forms of maltreatment receive limited narrative space. The study argues that Split draws on recognisable trauma discourse but intensifies it through thriller-horror conventions, especially by converting defensive responses and dissociation into signs of danger and exceptional power. It therefore proposes a distinction between clinical recognisability and cinematic amplification as a concise framework for analysing trauma representation without treating fictional behaviour as diagnosis.
Co-Authors Ana Mariana Dahlia Husain