Whissel's Theory of Verticality

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The Concept of Verticality
One of the more intriguing topics Whissel explores in her work is the idea of verticality. The development of digital effects in modern cinema and their influence on how tales are portrayed on the big screen are topics covered in Whissel's book Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema (Whissel, 2014). According to the concept of "verticality," cinema has become increasingly dependent on the screen's vertical axis to produce dynamic, visually appealing, and symbolic scenes. Films can generate a sense of tension and excitement and emphasize the struggles between opposing forces by accentuating the extreme highs and lows of the vertical axis. This idea is intriguing because it uses the vertical axis to show how films can portray various feelings, from soaring hope and joy to dread and terror.
Whissel contends that the emblematist tradition, which employed dynamic depictions of vertical movement to describe or allegorize moral and political conditions, is where the concept of verticality first emerged (Whissel, 2014). Whissel then traces the history of the idea of verticality in film, beginning with the 1970s use of unique and optical effects to animate characters' along the vertical axis of the screen and continuing through the advancement and development of digital processes in the 1990s and beyond, such as photorealistic digital animation, motion control, and wire-removal software (Wood, 2002). These innovations enabled filmmakers to stage sequences at incredible heights and portray heroes struggling along the spatial coordinates of lows and highs while they fly, sink, and struggle.
According to Whissel, vertically oriented bodies and entities typically connect to the universe's physical laws and the current order in fictional settings (Whissel, 2006). Given that verticality is a frequently employed metaphor, power and an individual's relationship to it, whether transcendent, defiant, or subordinate, are given a dynamic, hyperkinetic expression (Cian, 2017). Vertically oriented bodies and objects epitomize the struggle between opposing forces in movies like Hero, Titanic, Avatar, and The Matrix. They also give a dynamic and spectacular expression to the more significant the...