Review: Feels Good Man Is a Potent, and Ultimately Hopeful, Cautionary Tale

The film is at its most piercing and perceptive when traversing the virtual (and virulent) minefield of online fringe groups.

Feels Good Man
Photo: Ready Fictions

“I’m just a spectator to how things…mutate and evolve on the internet,” says cartoonist Matt Furie, describing the uncanny experience of watching one of his artistic creations, an animated frog named Pepe, transform from the easygoing slacker amphibian in his 2005 comic Boy’s Club to one of the most controversial internet memes and, eventually, the de facto mascot of the alt-right. Arthur Jones’s fascinating, deeply unsettling Feels Good Man, named after Pepe’s signature catchphrase, examines this strange evolution from myriad perspectives, tracing the outlandish, funny, and terrifying ways in which the frequently crude reproductions of a mellow cartoon frog—who initially wanted only to convey the simple joy of peeing with his pants around his ankles—ultimately came to wield a very real and frightening amount of influence in the real world.

As Feels Good Man plunges into the bizarre, nihilistic online abyss from which Pepe rose to notoriety, Jones explores the emotional and professional turmoil that the sweet, mild-mannered Furie went through after his intellectual property was co-opted by white nationalists. Though Jones shows an unmistakable empathy for the cartoonist and the strange predicament that led Pepe to be classified as a symbol of hate by the Anti-Defamation League, the director stresses the disastrous effects of Furie’s hesitation to retain, and later regain, control of his creation until after it was too late. In this respect, Feels Good Man functions as a potent cautionary tale to all artists in an age where memeification can swiftly take personal artistic works and, for all intents and purposes, effectively make them permanently part of the public domain. That the democratization of the internet has opened a doorway for fascist ideologies to openly quash democratic ones is an irony that isn’t lost on the film.

But Feels Good Man is at its most piercing and perceptive when traversing the virtual (and virulent) minefield of online fringe groups, particularly the communities on websites like 4Chan, that played a key role in the reincarnation of Pepe as a hate-spewing meme. Jones includes interviews that deconstruct the misanthropic, tribe-like nature of 4chan, its users’ “Darwinian struggle for attention” as they obsessively compete for upvotes that bring increased attention to what’s often the most vile and outrageous content imaginable. Author Dale Beran describes the 4chan ethos as “owning your weirdness and loserdom,” while psychologist and self-proclaimed “memetist” Dr. Susan Blackstone succinctly explains the history of memes, from Richard Dawkins’s original definition in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to the more modern internet version that’s become a beast of its own.

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Some of these experts and interviewees pile on 4chan and its cultish trove of trolls who couch their racist, misogynistic beliefs in seemingly innocent memes. But Jones also talks with prominent 4chan posters to get their insider perspectives, as well as Matt Braynard, the former Data Chief and Strategist for Trump for President, who discusses the power of memes and online images, and the role Pepe played in galvanizing a nihilistic base that continues to take gleeful joy in “owning the libs” at any cost. He even goes so far as to suggest that Hillary Clinton and her campaign’s utter lack of understanding of online culture and semiotics likely cost her the election. And the film makes a compelling case that dismissing or renouncing online fringe groups, like the white nationalists who advanced their causes through Pepe memes, without attempting to understand their new, and unfortunately effective, methodologies only gives men like Richard Spencer and Donald Trump more ammunition.

Recalling the moment that he was finally fed up with Pepe being used as an avatar of discrimination and hate, Furie says, “If you want to escape hell, you can’t ignore it. You almost have to go through it.” This leads to a fascinating subplot involving a number of lawsuits filed by the cartoonist, most humorously against extremist and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But Furie’s statement about not ignoring hell is equally applicable to the current political landscape in the United States, where white supremacists festering with rage are finding new ways to bring social outcasts and the economically downtrodden into their toxic fold.

In an archival clip late in the film, Steve Bannon states that the enemy of the right isn’t the left, but rather the media, and goes on to stress the importance of obliterating objective truth. Feels Good Man illustrates how that goal can be attained through something as innocuous as a cartoon frog, especially when such an image can be used to effectively peddle xenophobic, sexist, and racist rhetoric under the guise of a joke. It also meticulously details the exponentially increasing power of the internet to shape both culture and politics, most notably how the so-called “deplorables” are writing new rules to the game and how our pretending those rules don’t exist only leads to an undefeatable state of cognitive dissonance.

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A brief coda that sees Pepe embraced as a symbol of resistance during pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong offers a ray of hope at the end of an often-distressing film. Through its depiction of Pepe’s rebirth as a figurehead of social and political justice and Furie’s eventual embrace of a more active role against the toxic weaponization of his work, Feels Good Man conveys the importance of truly understanding the beliefs and tactics of your enemy in any resistance movement. Burying your head in sand feels good, but you do so at your own peril.

Score: 
 Director: Arthur Jones  Running Time: 92 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2020  Buy: Soundtrack

Derek Smith

Derek Smith's writing has appeared in Tiny Mix Tapes, Apollo Guide, and Cinematic Reflections.

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