Prior to deciding to come to this past Friday’s showing of John Landis’ The Blues Brothers, I did a cursory skim of its Wikipedia page. I had remembered my parents mentioning it once or twice so I figured it was an older film somewhere between Die Hard and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. When, within the first two paragraphs of its wiki page, the plot was described as a “redemption story” for ex-convict Jake Blues, I had subconsciously judged a book (movie?) by its cover and labeled it a wholesome buddy comedy to watch right before finals, something that I very much needed.

While I don’t feel that this initial assessment was entirely incorrect, it certainly doesn’t capture the entire essence of the movie. What I didn’t expect going in was biting commentary—commentary that is still strikingly relevant today, some forty years later—in between the jokes and musical numbers.

Looking back, I find it funny that film billed flatly as a “redemption story” has the police as one of the primary antagonists. Throughout the movie, this stance is unmoving. Until the very end, the police are out to get the brothers, and the film even ends with the band in jail after finally having been caught. While on some level this does play a very comedic role in the story, I can’t help but see parallels to the way police are viewed in society today. There is an increasing divisiveness with how society perceives the police, especially after events like the shootings of Eric Garner, Dedric Colvin, and Michael Brown. It’s interesting to see how this has evolved since the early 80’s when this movie was first released—even moreso to see how relevant it still is today.

In a similar vein, the other major antagonist of the story is the Nazi Party. Similar to the role of the police in the film, this seems as first to be played comically. However, there are some interesting parallels to today’s society. With the startling resurgence of white supremacy in the past year (e.g. Charlottesville), this hits close to home. While the idea that there are people who still feel this way may seem ridiculous, the bigotry showcased in the movie is still alive and well today.

We have definitely progressed as a society in a lot of different ways since the year 1980 when The Blues Brothers was released. But sometimes films like this can’t help but make you wonder if we’ve truly come as far as we think we have in the last forty years.