The Parallax View: What We Have Overlooked—Some Thoughts on Celestial Method

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Editor’s preface: This article is quite a demanding read. Please bear that in mind, and bear with us.

I. The Parallax Split

In the anime Celestial Method, the interaction between two incompatible scenes is plain to see: on one side, the observatory the protagonists remember from seven years earlier; on the other, the town after Nonoka’s return.¹ Here we can see an irreducible difference between “reality” and “prehistory”: the present as “reality,” memory as “prehistory.” A vulgar Hegelian view would run as follows: prehistory, as some latent “mysterious factor,” determines the course of the entire history from the outset. For instance, the “original relationship” seven years earlier created a “certain unspoken accord” among the protagonists, allowing them to “understand one another” when confronted with a crisis seven years later.

Where, exactly, does this view go wrong?

What we should recognize here is the seduction of ideology: ideology turns external social relations into internal psychological traits, as Žižek puts it. Behind this misrecognition, is there not an attempt to construct a fantasy retroactively? A genuinely Lacanian-Hegelian view is precisely the opposite: the relationship between these two scenes is not diachronic at all, but synchronic. We thus have two opposing horizons. Their opposition is Kantian, an opposition between the noumenal and phenomenal realms: on one side, a happy childhood already gone, now nothing but memory; on the other, an adolescent life full of passion and anxiety. It must be stressed again that there is a rupture between them. To address this antinomy, we need to introduce the dimension of parallax: the parallax object rests on this rupture. It is the irreducible unknown factor, the obstacle confronting us when our horizon shifts, the traumatic kernel at its most radical.

Discussing the narrative failure of the two versions of Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night—one chronological, the other using flashbacks—Žižek acutely observes that “what we encounter here is the parallax function at its purest: the gap between the two versions is irreducible, it is the ‘truth’ of both of them.”² Is the predicament of Tender Is the Night not precisely that of parallax? On the one hand, chronological narration traps the story in ideological mystification, making it seem like a tissue of lies: it commits the error of vulgar Hegelianism. On the other, flashback narration makes the story feel abrupt: “while the jump from the present […] to the past […] is convincing, the return to the present ‘doesn’t work.’” What Fitzgerald overlooks is precisely the most important factor in psychoanalysis—the story’s absent cause, the objet petit a that forever evades symbolization. For this reason, the narrative reaches an impasse. All that remains is to “admit defeat—to circumscribe the gap itself by presenting both versions.”

In Celestial Method, however, we find a different sort of solution: faced with the unavoidable narrative gap between the two scenes, Naoki Hisaya adopts a gesture of “contraction.” Celestial Method chooses neither chronological narration nor flashback narration. Instead, it sutures the prehistory of seven years earlier into present reality through interspersed memories. In the anime, memories of the observatory seven years earlier always appear in a romanticized form, whether accompanied by a theme song or given a distinctive visual treatment. Those scenes are always fragmentary, blurred, incomplete. Once veiled, they seem to become an ideal realm beyond reality, independent of it. In other words, Hisaya sacrifices the completeness of this seven-year-old prehistory, mystifying it and turning it into a supplement to the “main narrative of reality,” thereby avoiding the impasse Fitzgerald encountered. In this process, the scenes of seven years earlier are elevated to the Thing, becoming an object of desire strictly opposed to reality.

We cannot help asking: how is such a miraculous suture possible? To answer this, we must go further and explore the gesture of “contraction” mentioned above. Here, of course, “contraction” means contraction in Schelling’s sense: as a primordial self-withdrawal, it marks the passage from primordial repose, filled with the “joyous anxiety of nothing,” to prohibition, as Žižek puts it.³

Is this not exactly what happens in Celestial Method?

First comes the primordial impasse, built into the premise: an irreconcilable contradiction in reality, an imminent narrative failure. In this failure we see the structure of drive—a repetitive, twitching, curving structure; the impasse leaves the narrative unable to advance. Drive circles the abyss of the chaotic Real, inscribed as a traumatic kernel in the foundations of the entire story. In the work, this takes the form of Nonoka and the other four protagonists having absolutely nothing in common. The crux of the problem is not the happy memories of the observatory seven years earlier, but Nonoka, the protagonist who arrives in town suddenly, without warning. In the anime, we can readily see how at a loss Shione is when Nonoka suddenly appears.

Is this not a hint? At this moment, is Nonoka not precisely Freud’s “neighbor”? She is a terrifying alien presence; absolutely no communication in any meaningful sense is possible between her and the other four protagonists. Without a shared fantasy-memory as a guarantee, it is hard to imagine the other four having anything to do with a transfer student they do not know. We are now forced to confront the most traumatic fact: there is no intersubjectivity at all; the big Other does not exist. In short, this is a crisis of silence, concealing the danger that the entire story will fail.

Next comes the attempt to articulate it. Here we arrive at the two opposing scenes of reality and prehistory. We must notice that their emergence is entirely contingent. On the one hand, nothing empirically verifiable guarantees the supposed “unspoken accord” among the five protagonists at the observatory seven years earlier. Ironically, the writer must ultimately appeal to an unknown factor with a distinctly mysterious aura—Noel—to sustain the fantasy of this “accord.” On the other hand, as noted earlier, the introduction of the symbolic order, accompanied by the signifier’s first metaphor, always produces a remainder that will not divide out. Is this not an excellent account of alienation? In other words, we obtain two opposing products: on one side, the “gentrified” neighbor, the process of subjectivization; on the other, the true unconscious subject, the remainder that constantly threatens this process. At this point, the order of signifiers thoroughly splits the subject, which becomes the barred subject.

Finally, the dimension of fantasy emerges. Let us reiterate the crisis now before us: it is no longer the silence pervading the text, but the absolute irreducibility of the different horizons. There is no way to have the best of both worlds. We have only two choices: acknowledge the split, as Fitzgerald does, or sacrifice the completeness of one side to secure narrative coherence, as Hisaya does. In other words, the subject presupposes itself as the subject of language, yet this gesture of presupposition continually threatens its undertaking. Here we witness the arrival of prohibition: prohibition draws a mysterious veil over the prehistory of seven years earlier, transforming it into the sacred Thing. Is the anime’s counterpart to prohibition not precisely that sublime object floating above the town, so hard to approach—the saucer? Is the saucer not a pure nonhuman witness, the embodiment of the big Other that imposes prohibition? Whenever the protagonists recall their childhood seven years earlier, their memories break off abruptly at the saucer’s sudden appearance. Is this merely a coincidence? (Particularly striking is the fact that the anime never directly shows the scene in which the protagonists summoned the saucer seven years earlier.) We should remember that ideological mystification consists precisely in this kind of remainder-effect. We must not take the word at face value and understand prohibition as a cold commandment. On the contrary, prohibition always arises together with desire. It brings an obscene stability, the possibility of fantasizing about what is not there—exactly what the story now gives us. Trivial, unremarkable childhood memories suddenly become a utopia the protagonists yearn for day and night. The two previously parallel narrative perspectives become the following pair: primordial memory as an impossible kernel, and the everyday life/reality constructed around it. At this point, perhaps we can fully understand the significance of Hisaya’s introduction of the saucer into the anime: it is what retroactively posits contingency as necessity; it is what rescues the narrative from its impasse.

II. The Master and Woman

The anime also lets us see the product of symbolization from another side: the master-signifier, which emerges from the multitude of signifiers and fixes the symbolic order in place. Does it not correspond exactly to the “wish” Noel speaks of? The wish is something empty and formless, yet intimately connected to childhood memories transformed into the Thing. It calls the protagonists to devote themselves to the cause of fantasy. In the anime, Noel assumes precisely this posture of mastery. Her insistence on the “wish” is always pathological and utterly groundless. (“No matter what, I really want Nonoka and Shione both to smile.”) She sustains the protagonists’ relationships by giving their actions meaning, retroactively recasting their impoverished, unalluring everyday life as effort directed toward a goal. On the one hand, she conceals the subject’s split; on the other, she drives the signifiers of knowledge ($S_2$) to labor in the service of the cause. In this process, we once again witness, from a different angle, the birth of the remainder as the object-cause of desire—here, a remainder the master seeks to appropriate.

We have now arrived at Noel’s true identity: she is the subject supposed to know. What, then, of the other crucial identity opposed to her—the hysterical subject that gives the master a structural position? Nonoka is the anime’s counterpart to this kind of subject. She sutures her own lack to the master-signifier and derives enjoyment through her transference to the master. Is it not precisely Noel’s existence that allows Nonoka to form a connection with the town and the saucer? This is how the contract among the protagonists is established: they attach themselves to an empty form in exchange for a connection at the level of form. Nonoka addresses the master-signifier ($S_1$) and obtains knowledge ($S_2$) as a product—the memories of seven years earlier. Perhaps we can now answer a question that perplexed us while watching the anime: why, at the beginning, has Nonoka completely forgotten those happy days seven years earlier? There is only one possible answer: memory as knowledge is merely fantasmatic knowledge, a product of the hysteric’s discourse. Only after encountering the master (Noel) can the hysterical subject (Nonoka) produce this knowledge.

Finally, we should turn our attention to Nonoka’s childhood friend, Shione. Shione reveals the most radical dimension of Celestial Method. She stands in strict opposition to the master and is the only “woman” in the entire work—a woman in the Lacanian sense. She bears a remainder of enjoyment, which binds her intimately to the lack in the big Other. In other words, she refuses to reduce Nonoka’s traumatic departure without a goodbye seven years earlier to happy memories in any sense; she refuses to accept the mystification brought about by castration. She alone is a genuinely ethical subject. Is what she maintains not precisely a gesture of outright refusal? She clings to her promise with Nonoka seven years earlier to watch the meteor shower together, yet when Nonoka proposes that they make up, she refuses without reason. It is not hard to see the humiliation this inflicts on the master, Noel. In Shione’s presence, Noel is powerless, caught in a dilemma. She cannot answer Shione’s questions. On the one hand, she cannot maintain the consistency of her own existence: once the wish is fulfilled, she must disappear. On the other, she cannot explain what justifies her existence. Interestingly, Hisaya never manages to answer this question directly throughout the work. The lack in the big Other, the empty gesture supporting the master’s imposing image, is laid completely bare.

Is such a refusal not precisely what Kierkegaard calls “infinite resignation”? First comes pure sacrifice: “woman” will sacrifice everything for the Cause-Thing, yet all she receives in exchange is the loss of that very Cause-Thing. (At the beginning of episode 12, the anime dramatically resets the entire story: Nonoka has only just arrived in town, and naturally the memories of seven years earlier are now very different…)

At this level, the opposition between Shione and Nonoka is clear: Nonoka is a “man,” sacrificing herself for the Thing—the wish of seven years earlier; Shione is a woman, sacrificing herself without asking anything in return. “Men are moral, while only women are properly ethical.”⁴ Ethics here undoubtedly means the ethics of the Real, the ethics of frustration—that is, refusing the symbolic order from within the symbolic order. First she throws herself into the cause of the Thing, repeatedly rejecting Nonoka for the sake of their “promise of seven years earlier”; then, at the end, she refuses to inscribe this very gesture of refusal in the ideological symbolic order. No wonder the other four protagonists are at a loss when faced with her. Hers is a refusal that asks for nothing in return, a refusal directed straight at lack: we have no idea what she actually wants. This differs markedly from the attitude of another female character in the anime, Yuzuki. Her refusal is a complete feint, ingratiation concealed beneath a radical exterior. Yuzuki’s refusal has an ulterior aim: she seeks another kind of recognition from the big Other—compensation and an apology from her brother. We must never confuse this resolute “No” with the “No” of prohibition discussed earlier. One is pure form, an empty position without content; the other is an excessive element without a proper position. Here we move from the big Other to the small other, from A to a, from the symbolic order to a tiny tic. Now, at last, as the story progresses, we can pass through the veil and confront the chaos of the Real.

III. Naoki Hisaya as a Hegelian

At the anime’s close, we witness a revolutionary moment. Beneath a night sky streaked with meteors, the five protagonists finally fulfill their wish of seven years earlier. Yet when they turn around, they discover that at the instant the two scenes—seven years earlier and present reality—overlap, Noel, the witness to it all, is about to disappear as well. This is, of course, distinctly Hegelian: the split between essence and appearance is always a split within appearance itself. Or, to put it another way, there is only one true universality, “concrete universality”: the failure encountered whenever something concrete attempts to leap from itself into universality. What we witness is precisely such a moment of failure. We try to lift the veil concealing what lies “behind reality,” only to discover that what is there is no different from what stands before us—or, indeed, that there is nothing there at all. The memories of seven years earlier are no unfathomable myth. Prehistory and reality have the same structure; their difference is merely the difference between two perspectives. Here I cannot help admiring Hisaya’s courage. He takes a crucial step, moving from external reflection to determinate reflection.

As the boundaries between the different horizons blur, all that remains before our eyes is a blank. Once the fantasy framework that supplies coordinates for existing things is lost, reality immediately loses its consistency and collapses into mutually divided appearances. In the anime, this means the collapse of the existing narrative structure. The only solution is to begin the story again.

Here we must recall Hegel’s lesson: essence presupposes itself as essence, and true essence is the sublation of this presupposition.⁵ Is this not precisely what Hisaya attempts in Celestial Method? To avoid a narrative impasse, the memories of seven years earlier are first presupposed as an essence, as though they were the source of all enchantment, as though an unspeakable secret were hidden there. But at the end of the story, this gesture of presupposition is negated. Essence is brought before appearance, and the memories of seven years earlier merge with reality. We might say that Spirit lifts the mysterious veil, only to discover what it had already placed there itself. The story begins again, but this new beginning is by no means a simple repetition. It marks the arrival of the moment of “subjective destitution”: the narrative “no longer presupposes itself as a subject,” and thus accepts its own fractures, accepts its own inconsistency. In the world after the restart, the memories of seven years earlier are restored to what they originally were, restored to ordinary everyday life. As the title of episode 12, “The Town with no Disk,” indicates, the age of myth is gone for good. We accept this failure and return to impoverished appearances. Let us say it again: all we are left with is the split within appearance, the fact that the subject has presupposed essence.

At the ending, Noel, who should already have disappeared, appears once more. Here we should notice the change in her identity: she has been thoroughly desublimated and demystified, transformed from an imposing master into an ordinary flesh-and-blood being. This reappearance is comic. Is it not precisely the Kierkegaardian comedy of Incarnation? Žižek puts it this way:⁶

Thus comedy is the very opposite of shame: shame endeavors to maintain the veil, while comedy relies on the gesture of unveiling. […] when, instead of a hidden terrifying secret, we encounter the same thing behind the veil as in front of it, this very lack of difference between the two elements confronts us with the “pure” difference that separates an element from itself.

Does this not correspond exactly to the anime’s closing scene? The protagonists reenact in present reality the ritual of “summoning the saucer” from seven years earlier, but this time nothing seems to happen… The subject accepts the lack in the big Other and arrives at the truth of its own desire. From this standpoint, the Real is no longer an obstacle encountered in passing from one appearance to another. The correct formulation would be this: appearance is the cut, the split between two Reals—or, more precisely, something emerging from this split divides the Real from itself. To return to Noel: how are the sacred “wish,” “understanding,” and “unspoken accord” between subjects embodied in her? Is there not a certain negativity in her? She dissolves abstract universalities of this kind, and true concrete universality is this very gesture of dissolution, this negativity itself. At this point, we finally see in her the true nature of castration: what occupies the formally empty place of the big Other is not any “natural” element. Its arrival is purely contingent. Noel is Noel; she is just an ordinary **.⁷ Yet it is essential to grasp the following fact: in another respect, she is universality itself. As Hegel’s famous assertion has it: “Spirit is a bone.”

What is comic is that the bone, apparently the embodiment of unfathomable Spirit, has nothing mysterious about it at all. The final parallax in Celestial Method is precisely the parallax within Noel. It reveals the big Other’s last secret: the Other bears a fracture that no appropriate element can ever mend. In other words, we recognize that our lack is the lack in the big Other. On this basis, the protagonists bravely accept the split within the One itself, accept the dimension of drive hidden beneath the unruffled surface of everyday life, accept the existence of their own “excess”—Nonoka, the “neighbor” who left without saying goodbye and returned unannounced.

静けさがそう爪を立てて — Silence pokes its head out, just like that⁸
夜明け前の君の表情は — Your expression before dawn
何かにおびえていたけれども — Though it showed you were still afraid of something
強い眼差し持ち — You still held a resolute gaze
私たちのページはまだ途中で — Our page is not yet finished
枝分かれすれどもいつかどこかで — Even if we part and go our separate ways, someday, somewhere
また出会える（またここで） — We will surely meet again (here again)

Let us end by returning to these lyrics from the anime’s ending theme. Are they not precisely a portrait of the passage from alienation to separation? The subject faces the silence “poking its head out” at the place of lack and, refusing to yield, “holds a resolute gaze.” There, in some distant future, at the point of impossibility in reality, after we have parted, “we will meet again.” This heralds the arrival of a revolutionary moment: actuality can reshape itself, including its own failure within itself. We should believe this without doubt. Such is the ethics of psychoanalysis: “Where it was, I must come to be: that is my responsibility.”⁹

References

1. The Parallax View, Slavoj Žižek.

2. The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Žižek.

Editor’s note: If you have persevered to the end, that really is quite an achievement. Next time, while respecting the author’s freedom as a critic, we will suggest a lighter style.