‘Feels Good Man’ Trailer: Pepe The Frog’s Creator Fights the Far Right

Before he was a symbol of hate for the far right, Pepe the Frog was just a lovable, laid back chill little dude created by artist Matt Furie. He was a character from Furie’s comic Boy’s Club and had nothing to do with Donald Trump, 4chan or any other white supremacists.

But then something happened and Pepe was co-opted by the far-right trolls who populate the web. Furie’s creation was quickly transformed into a avatar of hatred, violence and racism. The new documentary Feels Good Man showcases just how that happened and what Furie did to distance himself and also reclaim his cute green cartoon.

Feels Good Man is Arthur Jones’s directorial debut and follows Furie as he fights to “take back Pepe from the dark forces that have turned him from a silly comic-book character into their own symbol.” It looks to be full of whacky, animated imagery while also containing a lot of information about the real world and how politics and the internet have combined to create a bastard child of racism and ugliness. Sounds uplifting, huh?

Feels Good Man is set to be released on September 4.

When Matt Furie first created Pepe the Frog, a character in his indie comic Boy’s Club, Matt was an easygoing San Francisco artist and Pepe was a chill frog dude. Through a series of unforeseen events and bizarre connections driven by the internet, Pepe came to be a symbol of hate for the far right. How that exactly happened is a wild journey into the heart of online life today and the memeification of our shared collective culture, where the meanings of images change moment to moment and cannot be controlled even by their creators.

Furie decides to fight to take back Pepe from the dark forces that have turned him from a silly comic-book character into their own symbol. But is it already too late? Debut director Arthur Jones takes us through a modern-day saga of the internet that must be seen to be believed or understood. Feels Good Man shows us how a character meant to provide joy and fun can slowly morph into something else—but just maybe can change again.