Feels Good Man

This documentary has two focuses; the story of Pepe being adopted and appropriated by the internet, and the story of a cartoonist losing his creation. It is in the telling of the former story where the film excels. It follows Pepe from when it first becomes popular on bodybuilding forums to becoming the most popular meme on 4chan to eventually becoming a symbol of the alt-right in the 2016 U.S. election. The movie frames this entire story in the emotions of the people posting the meme. It is not so much about the meme itself as it is about what it means to them, and Pepe meant a lot.

The presentation of the documentary is creative and well paced, mixing animation, interviews, television footage, and screen grabs to keep from ever becoming monotonous. The result is an exiting presentation that emphasizes the empathy for the people being talked about. When the movie gets to the point where Pepe is becoming the symbol of a political movement and Trump is posting himself as Pepe, it is exhilarating. I remember this happening in real life and despising these people, yet despite myself I was getting caught up in the excitement of it all.

There is a sobering transition of tone when, after this section, the camera is back on Matt Furie, his life made so difficult by what was done with his creation. He was naive and maybe wilfully ignorant of what was happening, but he did what we wish more artists would do today, letting people be creative with their characters rather than sending cease and desists. By the time he tries to recover Pepe it is too late and he finally kills the character as 4chan rejoices that Pepe is officially theirs. It is terribly sad.

I thought about downgrading my rating to a 9 because the ending is optimistic in a way that i didn't quite buy, but I've decided to forgive it. The story of this movie is an unprecedented catastrophe that no one could have predicted. Maybe its foolish to assume I can predict where the story is going.

This is a really good documentary, only let down slightly by a part near the end regarding the 'rare Pepe's'- they didn't explain it very well and I was super confused. It also wasn't very relevant to everything else, which makes me wonder whether it was added to get the overall film over 90 minutes.

That being said, everything else was really strong. The presentation is unique, I liked the use of animation, and the music was surprisingly good too. It tells a fascinating story about a meme that got out of the control of its creator, and while I was familiar with Pepe to some extent, I definitely didn't know the whole story, which made this really engaging.

For me, it started to get really interesting when they began to cover the meme's relation to the 2016 US Election- that was genuinely fascinating.

If you're interested in meme culture, politics, or just want a good documentary, I can highly recommend this one.

It's a well made documentary with nicely animated segments. Largely following the perspective of the creator and what happened to pepe. All through an extremely narrow and biased view.

Around the 45min mark, it becomes just crystal clear how he doesn't understand his creation. How he, together with ADL, Hillary Clinton, Maddow and rest of left wing media helped enable this to become a "far right hate speech symbol". It never was that, until these people decided to make pepe into that. It seems completely out of touch with trolling and getting a rise out of people, and going against the mainstream and political correctness. The more these people wish to silence and censor people, the more crazy pepe memes they would get in response. They themselves are the enablers.

The 4chan guy they mainly choose to focus on was such a stereotype fitting 100% the narrative they attempted to persuade. While they did talk to a girl who also roamed 4chan, she was left too much out of the documentary so they could push their view on the audience.

As they show Hong Kong demonstrators towards the end who embrace Pepe, the creator and movie makers seems to not understand that them embracing pepe comes from similar reasons as why it was embraced in the US by Trump supporters. In both cases it's used as anti-leftists, anti-censorship, anti-establishment memes. If they happen to side with the Chinese government, I'm sure they would have labeled their use of it as "hate speech" also.

But all of this being said, it's not a bad documentary, as long as the biased view doesn't annoy you too much. Still a nice capsule of most of the pepe events and how the character grew beyond the grasp of it's creator.

As someone who experienced almost all the events presented, this was just a huge trip down memory lane. so i was just constanly pointing and saying "aah i remember that". so i enjoyed a lot of those moments. though im kinda let down on the fact that the story focuses on one side of the story. the whole alt right thing isnt the place where pepe currently resides. so in summary, i really liked it because it is a story close to home, but there were some things that i dissagreed on from a narrative standpoint.

8/10: really enjoyed it, but has some flaws

The first 45 minutes is actually quite informative in following the 4chan adoption and evolution of the meme - the mindset of those who first adopted Pepe and the emotional bond that was made. The next 45 however is essentially the reason Trump won: the lesson the left never learned; a minimization of the bigger conversation to a hyper-focus on the alt-right. In other words, the film does a good job of documenting the battle that took place with the alt-rights use of Pepe. However it's to the exclusion of the bigger campaign of those who do not agree with the alt-right but used Pepe to express hope and belief in a Trump victory over the rise of authoritarian and global Leftism. <-- the conversation that never takes place.

Much like reading a politifact "fact" check, the documentary quickly moves from history of the origins of Pepe into a breakdown and explanation of liberal narrative. As such, it leaves the 2016 experience of an entire swath of conservative and moderate voices misrepresented and lumped into a single basket of hate and aggression.

Let be me clear... This seems to be the way that the creator experienced everything and thus as a "Furie" documentary it tells his story quite well and accurately. However, as a "Pepe" documentary it fails to tell the whole story in anything other than a two dimensional, singularly aspected fashion - white supremacists used Pepe to promote their politics. This is of course true but only a small piece of a much bigger phenomena. Netflix will eat this up however and I imagine it will be viewed by millions and seen as the whole story before it's run is over.

In summary, this was a good documentary experience and I feel better informed after watching it. I would recommend it to just about anyone with the qualifier of its political leaning. But honestly, If you're politically liberal then you already believe the narrative portrayed in the second half of the documentary. If you're politically conservative (or have been since 2016) you are already aware of the narrative bias.