Stuck with my brain

Just watched Avatar, a movie that couldn't have been any more predictable. I've long believed political correctness is ruining art and Avatar would appear to offer further evidence. These days it seems you have to portray a different culture positively - even if it's a fictional alien one. From the moment our hero arrives on the planet, the local culture is shown to be rich, textured and vital. Yawn. There never was the slightest doubt our hero would get seduced by their mysterious ways and end up fighting on their side against those horrible humans. For a movie so bursting with colour, Avatar was utterly black and white.

I couldn't help comparing Cameron's effort to one of my favourites, Planet of the Apes. In that movie, Taylor (Charlton Heston) ends up on a brutal alien world. It's quite clear that the locals are mainly bloodthirsty fundamentalist thugs. The simian culture is still evolving, still suspicious and filled with superstitious, negative elements. And boy, does that make for better viewing.

Another reason Apes is resonating is it's such a good example of a leap of imagination. It's all about racism and, to a lesser extent, the clash between faith and science. And how is this depicted? By setting it millions of years in the future where everything's been turned on its head and humans have become a subservient species. I deeply admire artists who can make such leaps of imaginations, partly because it's a trick that seems beyond me. At the moment my latest novel - about a cyclone - has stalled. I want to introduce a supernatural, horror or time-travelling element but am well and truly outside my comfort zone. I'd love the cyclone to be a metaphor or an allegory or some other word I don't quite understand but I just don't seem to have the confidence or nous to make it work. To compound my misery I've just reread Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 in which he effortlessly and wryly weaves a timetravelling/alien component into a story inspired by the horrific firebombing of Dresden. Why can't I do that?

Well, probably because Vonnegut's a better writer, although it might also have something to do with most artists only having one or two tricks up their sleeves. For me it's alienation - I can write about it in a funny or a serious way. And that's it. Look at AC/DC, still banging out the same album more than 30 years after Back in Black. And why not? Why try to fix something that ain't broke? They've got a worldwide audience and deliver what is expected time after time. And let's face it, reinvention is a bloody tricky thing. Some artists can do it eg Kid A or Achtung Baby! but most play it safe, either by design or an absolute inability to be able to do something different. Their brains just don't work that way. And so my cyclone novel will probably end up about some pitiful, idiotic bloke whose failure to get on with women is down to a bout of really rotten weather.

Hey, that doesn't sound too bad...