Tradition is back

I know movie sequels are usually terrible, but there’s one I’ve been brazenly anticipating: Happy Gilmore 2.  

Growing up in the 1990s Adam Sandler movies were part of the cultural furniture. The clang of an admittedly mediocre – yet likeable – actor yelling at his golf ball brought shameless laughter. “Why don’t you just go home ball?! Are you too good for your home?!”  

So, when Happy Gilmore 2 was released, I expected more slapstick frivolity. Instead, I got a lesson in the beauty of tradition. 

In the original movie, hapless ice-hockey player Happy Gilmore accidentally strikes it big as a golfer. He’s flamboyant, flouts convention, and captures people’s imaginations. The film was a salute to non-conformity – bringing colour to the potentially stuffy sterility of golf. It reflected our aversion to tradition and our dopamine-hungry pursuit of novelty. Real-life examples echoed these instincts: T20 cricket, 10-second TikTok videos, Blinkist book summaries, and 7-minute workouts. 

Interestingly, Happy Gilmore 2 rebuts its predecessor. Happy, now a middle-aged father, teams up with the golfing establishment to fight off a profit-hungry villain who tries to popularise golf with fireworks, electronic music, and tech-enhanced humans. 

The 30-year shift in Happy’s outlook reflects noteworthy truths. He pivots from the thrill of celebrity to the safety of family. From the buzz of novelty to the joy of old friendships. His journey affirms tradition – a nod to the Biblical idea that ‘the ancient paths are where the good way is.’

Culture is downstream from anthropology. With data doing the rounds suggesting that more people are open to the spiritual and traditional, perhaps it isn’t surprising that Hollywood is appealing to something that would have been laughed out of the public square in the 1990s. Tradition is back. 

This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.