{"id":20674,"date":"2020-07-29T15:26:51","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T22:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=films&#038;p=20674"},"modified":"2025-01-14T11:39:41","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T19:39:41","slug":"feels-good-man","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/feels-good-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Feels Good Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><i>Feels Good Man<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is the story of how artist Matt Furie, creator of a trippy, once-benign comic character named Pepe the Frog, fought an uphill battle to reclaim his iconic creation from those who turned it into a symbol of hate. An exploration of the power of online imagery and the fascinating spin cycle of memes in a culture where ownership and meaning can be wrested away from creators,<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Feels Good Man<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a thought-provoking, wild ride through an Internet that transformed an unlucky cartoon frog, and then the rest of the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Created by Furie as a character in his comic <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boy\u2019s Club<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Pepe was originally an embodiment of the laid-back lifestyles of young male college graduates finding their footing in the real world. After popping up in meme form on various fitness blogs, Pepe eventually started appearing on the anonymous online message board 4chan, where his image was quickly replicated\u00a0 and adopted as a symbol of misfits everywhere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Feels Good Man<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> follows Pepe\u2019s surreal journey of being co-opted and twisted into an image of hate by extreme online communities through the eyes of his horrified creator, who finds himself increasingly powerless to stop this co-optation as it spirals out of his control. The film asks the questions: Does anyone truly own anything on the internet? Can an image that has been transformed into one of hate be transformed once again into one of hope?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Feels Good Man is the story of how artist Matt Furie, creator of a trippy, once-benign comic character named Pepe the Frog, fought an uphill battle to reclaim his iconic creation from those who turned it into a symbol of hate. An exploration of the power of online imagery and the fascinating spin cycle of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":20801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1216,1256,1225,1252],"class_list":["post-20674","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-arts-and-culture","topic-elections","topic-politics-and-government","topic-visual-arts"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Feels Good Man | Films | Battle to Take Pepe the Frog Back | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chronicles the surreal story of Pepe the Frog\u2019s journey from laid-back cartoon character to registered hate symbol.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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