Documentary filmmaker Arthur Jones connects our society’s “narrative collapse” — an inability to construct linear narratives on a wide scale — to the rise of internet conspiracies.
“The internet has largely exploded this dynamic of coherency,” Jones said. “Instead, we are sort of all…piecing together our reality from these fragments, these little memes, and it’s a wildly disassociated jumble.”
On Sept. 19, Jones presented a screening of his Emmy-winning documentary “Feels Good Man” as part of the Connections Speaker Series in the Humanities Studio at Pomona College, followed by a lecture and Q&A.
“Feels Good Man,” created in 2020, explores the evolution of the Pepe the Frog meme and the struggle of its creator, Matt Furie, to come to terms with Pepe co-option by the alt-right, particularly during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Lisa Anne Auerbach, an art professor at Pomona College, introduced Jones.
“[The documentary] … is a story of an artist who loses control of his character and the idea of how a silly, sweet drawing might become weaponized in a time when images are currency, identity and communication,” Auerbach said.
Jones, who had been friends with Furie years before the alt-right wrested control of Pepe, found himself drawn into the chaotic world of 4chan, the platform where the meme gained traction. As he witnessed both Furie’s struggle and his conservative father’s political shift toward supporting Trump, Jones began investigating how the internet was weaponized in reactionary politics.
“[4chan] was a place that was a completely crowd-sourced subculture, free of corporatism. It was started by teenagers and it [was] wild and carefree … and that’s what made it appealing. But that’s also what made it dangerous,” Jones said in the panel.
The documentary depicts the many ways Pepe was adapted on 4chan to support Trump. Following a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, Pepe became a symbol for the incel-driven Beta Uprising on 4chan, leading to threats of violence in schools and colleges across the country.
“The more time I spent on it, I found it to be maybe the most profound place I’d ever been. The thing that was most profound about it was that it really molded the people who spent time on [it] but it was profoundly sad, it was profoundly angry, it [had a] profoundly lost feeling,” Jones said.
English Professor Kevin Dettmar, the director of the Humanities Studio, explained that this year’s theme, “Connections,” was chosen because they were looking to explore phenomena negatively impacted by the pandemic.
“I realized that [his documentaries] are both about connections and community,” Dettmar said. “In the light of his research into conspiracism and the online sharing of memes, what positive steps can we take to build and preserve human connections in a time when the nation seems more polarized every day?”
In the documentary, Furie explained the artistic process behind his comic “Boys’ Club,” which features Pepe. Though he initially chose not to engage with Pepe’s memeification, its adoption by the alt-right led him to create a campaign to save Pepe by asking people to post positive versions of the frog online. He grieved what his creation had become, going so far as to kill off the character in his comic strip. Finally, as the frog gradually became repurposed for more hopeful contexts like the Hong Kong protests, he rediscovered the joy in drawing Pepe.
“[The documentary] … is a story of an artist who loses control of his character and the idea of how a silly, sweet drawing might become weaponized in a time when images are currency, identity and communication.”
“It’s the movie that’s kind of trapped to the time that it was made but I hope that … it will be a work of unique media literacy,” Jones said. “I really wish people would start to interrogate these platforms and apps and systems that ultimately control our lives and are reprogramming the way in which we all communicate.”
Attendee Miranda Yee PZ ’27, a media studies major, said she was particularly fascinated by Jones’ examination of the wide-reaching impacts of internet culture.
“I think the conspiracies spawning out of the internet were super interesting,” Yee said. “I was able to talk with Arthur outside and he’s a talented filmmaker and documentary maker.”
Attendee Friederike von Schwerin-High, a professor of German at Pomona College, was intrigued by Jones’ depiction of various historical conspiracies such as the Satanic panic in the 1980s.
“Going back to the 1980s, to the time when he grew up, to see that there were already ideas about satanic worshiping, or … QAnon predecessors. That was surprising to me because I lived here in the 90s and I didn’t make that connection,” von Schwerin-High said.
Auerbach reflected on how the outside perception of artwork can alter the creation itself.
“It can be a challenge to understand how what we thought was ours … becomes part of a larger cultural discourse. A documentary film … can [help] us understand the myopia of a bubble while interrogating … what happens when the bubble pops,” Auerbach said.
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