What do you do when something you created, a piece of art, is co-opted by forces of hate and no longer means what you originally intended? That’s what artist Matt Furie has had to deal with as his character Pepe the Frog became a symbol of hatred and racism during the 2016 Presidential election. And how he coped with that is the subject of documentary Feels Good Man.
Feels Good Man follows Furie as he attempts to reclaim Pepe the Frog from the alt-right who have turned it into a hate symbol. The film is directed by Arthur Jones, and made its debut at Sundance earlier this year where it won U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker.
Feels Good Man opens on September 4th.
SYNOPSIS: In November 2016, a nasty election cycle had exposed a seismic cultural rift, and the country suddenly felt like a much different place. For underground cartoonist Matt Furie, that sensation was even more surreal. Furie’s comic creation Pepe the Frog, conceived more than a decade earlier as a laid-back humanoid amphibian, had unwittingly become a grotesque political pawn. FEELS GOOD MAN is a Frankenstein-meets-Alice in Wonderland journey of an artist battling to regain control of his creation, while confronting a disturbing cast of characters who have their own peculiar attachments to Pepe. Now, as Pepe continues to morph around the world – FEELS GOOD MAN offers a vivid, moving portrait of one man, one frog, and the very strange reality we’ve all found ourselves living in.
