Feels Good Man (2020)

Feels Good Man (2020)

A fascinating, almost dystopian look at creative ownership and hateful alt-right meme culture

7.4

Movie

United States of America
English
Comedy, Documentary
2020
ARTHUR JONES
Adam Serwer, Alex Jones, Donald Trump
94 min

What it's about

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.

The 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.

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