Educational Media Reviews Online

Arthur Jones’ debut documentary, Feels Good Man, brilliantly uncovers the disturbing metamorphosis of cartoonist Matt Furie’s 2006 underground Boy’s Club comic character, Pepe the Frog. Through the process of online memeification, Pepe was transmuted from Furie’s original quirky, impish stoner character to a designated symbol of hate co-opted by white supremacists and the “alt-right.” With the inception of this newly memeified Pepe, Furie had no interest in pursuing legal action against creators who were using his character online. While Furie was initially nonplussed when Pepe started popping up on forums across the web, this documentary captures this artist’s desperate attempt to reign in his innocent amphibian from the deepest, darkest depths of the Internet.

Jones’ psychedelic animations and cast of eccentric commentators help unravel the spiraling story of Pepe, while simultaneously peeling back the surface of the World Wide Web to reveal an increasingly dark and unhinged side of humanity. 4channers and self-identified “NEETs” (Not in Education, Employment or Training) who live in their parent’s basements, deeply identified with Pepe from the beginning, especially the sad, angry, and smug iterations. When Pepe gradually made his way to the mainstream many of these long-term Pepe users were enraged. It was in this lonely and angry cesspool of 4chan threads where Pepe’s most radical transformation transpired. In order to keep Pepe away from “normies,” users began creating increasingly offensive, grotesque, and racist renditions of Pepe.

This film offers insight into the bizarre political arena leading up to the election of Donald Trump. Just after announcing his run for presidency, Trump tweeted an image of himself edited to look like Pepe, smug face and all. Pepe even managed to get intertwined with the neo-Nazi, Richard Spencer, who wore a Pepe pin just before getting punched in the face in an infamous online video clip. Furie eventually took on Alex Jones, owner of the far-right conspiracy theory website, InfoWars, over their use of Pepe in a poster they were selling online. After being shown data that demonstrates Pepe as an “entry point to radicalization,” a researcher asked Furie if he felt any personal responsibility.

If this film does anything, it demonstrates the power of the Internet to continuously mutate ideas at an ever-escalating speed. While much of Pepe’s story is dark and most of Furie’s efforts to take him back are ultimately moot, Pepe is once again transformed, this time into a presumptive emblem of hope and resistance by protesters in Hong Kong.

Feels Good Man could serve as a starting point for many difficult discussions in a classroom setting. It touches on the power of art, copyright and intellectual property, culture, politics, mental health, societal isolation, and radicalization. This film is highly recommended for both academic audiences and the general public.

Awards:
Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker, 2020); Lighthouse International Film Festival (Best Feature-Length Documentary, 2020); B3 Biennial of the Moving Image (BEN Award, Best Documentary, 2020); Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (Special Mention, Best Documentary Feature, 2020); Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US (Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design or Animation, 2021); Sidewalk Film Festival (Best Documentary Feature, 2020)

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