Feels Good Man
A fascinating and moving documentary about the fraught experience of a young cartoonist Matt Furie who lost control of his innocent comic creation Pepe the Frog when it became an alt-right internet meme.
Doubles as a sociological investigation of the online alt-right and incel communities, who co-opted the image of Pepe for their own purposes and turned his original characterisation as a lovable slacker into a hate symbol. The unassuming Furie watched this transformation first with confusion and then with dismay, eventually launching a campaign to redeem his character.
An important film about recent shifts in political culture and about an artist’s journey once his creation becomes more powerful than himself.
“Feels Good Man is, in some sense, a horror movie about the legacy of images, the ownership of images by their creators, and the lives they take on outside of the artists who make them. In particular, it’s a horror story about the life of one particular image: Pepe.” ~ Abby Olcese, Slashfilm.
