Quick Take: Feels Good Man is an entertaining and informative documentary that sneaks in an emotional story of perseverance in the face of our crazy, meme-obsessed online world. 

Here’s something I hope you’ll all agree with: Nazis are bad. I don’t like them, and I don’t want to be associated with them. If, somehow against my will, I ever was associated with them, and something I wrote or made was twisted by racists and bigots and alt-right trolls for their own hateful ends, that would be pretty much the bummer of a lifetime. Well, unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to cartoonist Matt Furie, the subject of Arthur Jones’s new documentary Feels Good Man. One moment, Furie’s drawing a fun and goofy cartoon frog and calling him Pepe. A few years later (seemingly out of nowhere if you weren’t following the minute-to-minute happenings of 4chan) Pepe is put on the Anti-Defamation League’s official list of hate symbols. So, Furie is left with no choice but to fight back against the evil and gross forces that took his character away from him. 

I was sold on Feels Good Man when the filmmakers interview John Michael Greer, an occultist. He says that if you really want to wrap your head around the rise of the alt-right in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, you have to understand a little thing called “meme magic.” Sounds about as reasonable as any other explanation. The filmmakers do an adept job of contextualizing the politics surrounding the Pepe controversy without losing sight of how it all affects Furie, the emotional center of the story. 

Feels Good Man is a success because its character study of Matt Furie doubles as an instructive guide on how to fight right-wing extremism. Furie is such a loveable figure because it is clear he wants so badly just to be a good person. This simple motivation is enough for him to get involved and stay involved in the fight against the online trolls, amoral political opportunists, and all-around bad people who made Pepe a symbol of hate.  

At the end of the film, to sum up whether or not Pepe will ever be able to return to his intended place in the universe (simply an innocuous and friendly stoner frog), my main man Greer leaves us with a parting shot of mystical wisdom: “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but you can send it somewhere else.” For Matt Furie’s sake, and for all of our sake, I hope the magic man is right. 

Distributed by Ready Fictions, Feels Good Man is available on-demand this Friday, September 4, 2020.