Enter Celty, the Headless Rider

Enter the show Durarara, an imaginary retelling of Tokyo, and supernatural occurrences.

Especially famous is a headless motorcycle rider named Celty; she wears a Helmet, concealing this oddity.

 Celty is based off the dullahan[1] in Irish mythology. Celty is the person I would like to analyze today. Though she cannot speak in a canonical sense, she is voiced by the great Miyuki Sawashiro. Rather, Celty speaks by typing messages on her phone or computer. I enjoy her character for a variety of reasons but specifically her lack of a head intrigues me.

People – especially those who have seen inside her helmet – mainly view her with suspicion, except for a few characters in the show who are clearly outed as weirdoes anyways. Her housemate, the scientist Shinra, is one such character who does not fear her; indeed, he is rather fond of her. For example, police officers chased her unprovoked simply for being known as the headless rider; this example suggests that Celty is perceived as a monster. Simply being a monster is not a disability but the heedlessness falls into that category. 

A word of caution: this example is extreme, an approach that makes sense for a supernatural show that can bend notions of “physically possible” to pursue. Lacking a head in real life would simply mean death but this example is more akin to not being able to use your legs or something like that. Extreme examples often help people learn subjects they are not familiar with. Otherwise the intricacies of something as complex as ability can be harder to understand.

To the normal person, Celty is a monster.

Her challenges go beyond living with mere suspicion. As a result of her particular body, Celty is assumed to lack thought, emotions, and sight, and among other things. The headless rider is then seen as nonhuman due to these perceived difficulties with normally human senses and behaviors. Notions of disability stem from perception and institutional  barriers surrounding non-normed ability; disability is not necessarily stemming from a medical condition. In fact, Celty seems to have no problems from not having a head – she is the badass black rider, after all. Then her “disability” is clearly not from a medical condition of some kind. (I’ll set aside Celty being a dullahan in this post.)

But she is in fact insecure over her lack of head. One subplot of the show involves Celty trying to find her disembodied head, a journey that was lasted over twenty years. We learn a lot about Celty’s insecurities as a result of teasing on part of Shinra and arguably other characters in the show. The pressure placed onto Celty by others’ perceptions of her is highlighted by this insecurity. Throughout Durarara, Celty is often treated as a pawn of some kind. Izaya, another important character, constantly refers to her as a courier, for example. No wonder Celty feels so perpetually frustrated.

I have not yet finished the show but I hope that Celty gets some conclusion that allows her to be satisfied with her own life.

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[1] Headless women who search for their detached head. The dullahan ride headless horses, not bikes though. As we learn later – unsurprisingly – Celty’s ride is really her headless horse. But I don’t know much about this.