Our take
For those of us who don’t lurk on internet message boards and participate in social media culture, a documentary about memes might seem frivolous. But Feels Good Man steers the conversation into one about semiotics: the way images become symbols and can continue transforming—from a harmless expression of the self, into a hateful banner for bigotry, into a cry of protest and freedom. As his Pepe the Frog creation takes on a life of its own, artist Matt Furie attempts to reclaim ownership of it and finds that the relationship between an artist and their own work can be as difficult as any toxic relationship. It’s a bleak view of how unfeeling internet culture can be, but it reminds us that we always still have some power to beat the hate.
What it won
Sundance
1 nom
The story
When indie comic character Pepe the Frog becomes an unwitting icon of hate, his creator, artist Matt Furie, fights to bring Pepe back from the darkness and navigate America's cultural divide.
Elsewhere
"While "Feels Good Man" is stretched a bit too thin to really pierce what it feels like to sit there and watch the world corrupt your art, Furie's general powerlessness is endemic to this story in ways that have nothing to do with his personality."
— David Ehrlich
"Not content to string together talking head interviews, the movie uses art and animation to find a cinematic equivalent for Pepe's evolution from a quirky cartoon animal into a weapon."
— Matt Zoller Seitz
The details
Streaming arrival
Who picked it
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
