The Feels Good Man trailer tracks Pepe The Frog's hop from humor to hate
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Matt Furie killed off Pepe The Frog a few years back, a decisive action that set the stage for the cartoonist’s numerous attempts to pry his creation from the clutches of the alt-right. It’s no easy feat, what with the stoner frog’s evolution into bonafide hate symbol having coincided with the increasing politicization of the culture wars. But Furie’s been dogged in his efforts, which are chronicled in a new documentary that explores not only the artist’s work, but also how Pepe leapt from 4chan to the Daily Stormer.
Feels Good Man scored director Arthur Jones the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Our own A.A. Dowd, who caught the film at the 2020 True/False Festival, described it as “a deeply depressing depiction of internet culture” that “works rather swimmingly as a primer on the war for the character’s soul.” That soul, as you can see in the below trailer, is inextricably linked with that of Furie, who’s forced to reckon with his role in what’s unwittingly become one of the world’s most toxic symbols of hate.
Check out the trailer below.
Feels Good Man premieres on September 4.
8 Comments
I’m all for an artist trying to reclaim their art, especially if its be coopted by assholes. But I’m not sure if this is going to change anything big picture wise. Assholes are gonna asshole, whether it’s taking an ancient South Asian symbol and flipping it around, or making the “OK” hand sign a white power gesture. Furie has nothing to feel guilty about and I wish him the best of luck in making life difficult for the racist shitheads that have turned his work into a hate propaganda tool. If I was in his position I’d be doing that same thing. But would the world somehow be less racist if the memefication of Pepe had never happened? I doubt it.
Is this actually available to watch anywhere?
From what I can tell it’s supposed to premier Sept 4th but there’s no record of whether they’re premiering onto a streaming service or not
One thing is clear. Radicalized right wing people are not creative, which is why they constantly steal other peoples creative works and repurpose them for their own nefarious uses.
Indeed, but why would they co-opt a film about black people that was produced by Jews? Ironic appropriation?
Their attempts at humor (especially high-fiving each other for things that aren’t funny that they are loudly proclaiming are funny) and complete inability to understand the concept of irony are other trademark traits. Distilled: “I hate black people that was a hilarious joke I was being ironic!”
Too bad 4chan doesn’t use the same discussion / user post functionality that Kinja uses. If it did, pepe probably wouldn’t have turned evil because:
a.) users simply couldn’t make a post
b.) users can’t view other people’s postsI think Kinja solved the problem of toxic viral memes on the internet – just make sure the functionality of user discussion sucks so much ass that it completely dissolves the community. Problem solved.
It bugs me that they’re doing the same thing to Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, which is a delightfully silly movie that deserves a better legacy. I just take solace in the fact that a movie about brown kids breakdancing to save a Los Angeles community center simply can’t function as a hate text. Not even in the Matrix “if you squint hard and pretend everything in the movie represents the opposite of that thing” sense.