Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 06:11:57 PM

Login with username, password and session length

2020 Documentaries on Toxic Internet Culture: Feels Good Man / TFW NO GF

Started by Retinend, September 22, 2020, 02:09:37 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Retinend

Two related, recent releases: "Feels Good Man" is in the tradition of "Crumb" (1994): a portrayal of a genius artist and the troubles in his life - namely the fact that his character became the face of the alt right in 2016. The second came out back in May of this year: its title stands for "That Feel When No Girlfriend". It covers the bizarre incel subculture and taken together both films represent the dark side of our interconnected, internet age. Both are easy to find on the high seas - or, if you are a complete wageslave cuck, on Amazon Prime.

olliebean

Currently on a Prime free trial, so I went looking for them on Amazon, but couldn't find either.


Quote from: Retinend on September 22, 2020, 02:09:37 PM"Feels Good Man" is in the tradition of "Crumb" (1994): a portrayal of a genius artist and the troubles in his life

Not sure about the comparison to crumb.
I did enjoy it though, thanks for the recommendation of the other one, I'll give that a go too as I did find "feels good man" interesting. Here's my in depth review from elsewhere.

QuoteFeels Good Man

S'alright. Some empty vessel stoner type watches in despair as a character he made gets co-opted by sad angry types on the internet.
Canny interesting as I'm old and out of touch and I'd seen his froggy face here and there and it was nice making a sort of sense out of it all.

***

If anyone else is having trouble finding "that feel when no girlfriend", try "TFW no GF"
Edit: Oh, sorry, that's made clear in the first post, sorry, just skimmed it before posting, like a big sexy fool.

Retinend

Hm. I don't think Furie is a genius at the level of Crumb. He certainly isn't half as intellectual as Crumb - and at times he almost seems an idiot savant. But at the same time he clearly has a sort of genius (witness his Pepe mandelas at the end of the film), and the film fits right into the candid documentary genre that Zwigoff's "Crumb" created.




Others in the genre include the brilliant indie documentary film "Monster Road", the Henry Darger film "In the Realms of the Unreal", and the recent film about Ren & Stimpy creator "Happy Happy Joy Joy".

Retinend

Quote from: olliebean on September 22, 2020, 07:39:33 PM
Currently on a Prime free trial, so I went looking for them on Amazon, but couldn't find either.

https://www.amazon.com/TFW-No-Alex-Lee-Moyer/dp/B087N4632Q
https://www.amazon.com/Feels-Good-Man-Matt-Furie/dp/B08FFBHLLY

Sorry! Bad research on my part - it's US prime only.

I even tried it with my VPN set to the USA in case my advice could still be valid



but no... and unless you want to muck around with your address and then try with your USA-set VPN ... there's only one thing for it: ☠

It's a bit daft that these country limitations exist. They are directly driving people to piracy.

The Mollusk

I wasn't aware of these films. Definitely watching Happy Happy Joy Joy and Feels Good Man today, cheers Rets.

The Mollusk

Quote from: Retinend on September 23, 2020, 07:30:12 AM
the recent film about Ren & Stimpy creator "Happy Happy Joy Joy".

Just watched this. I've long been a fan of Ren & Stimpy, though for most of that time I was not consciously aware that the material I was madly in love with (seasons 3-5) were 99% absent of Kricfalusi. It was only in recent years that I became aware of the history of the show and the ousting of its tempestuous creator. Regardless, I had never pursued the finer details of the story, even when the news broke in 2018 about him being a nonce.

This is a very good documentary which I think pretty succinctly chronicles everything that needs to be known about the birth of the The Ren & Stimpy Show and the subsequent turmoil it underwent. It gives an even-handed portrayal of the passionate vision which was poured into the show's creation, as well as the revolutionary impact it had right out of the gate, and it does a decent job of objectively documenting this before it gradually meanders into the horrors of Kricfalusi's destructive and defective personality. He had a fair opportunity to try to paint himself in some sort of a favourable light here, but the man is so fucking egotistical that he cannot let things go and fails to depict himself as anything but a narcissistic, abusive weirdo. What he brought to animated television as a medium was unmistakably brilliant and I will continue to enjoy R&S for the rest of my days, but I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

The Mollusk

Really enjoyed Feels Good Man too. Poor old Matt Furie, he's such a wonderful artist and it was great to see Lisa Hanawalt in there too, she's wonderful.

What a fucking bizarre world we live in where this whole thing could happen. It's fascinating. I had absolutely no idea about the "Rare Pepe" currency thing and that absolutely boggled my mind.

non capisco

That Russ Hanneman-esque bloke driving around in his Lambo singing "Rare Pepe!" to the Pokemon theme tune cracked me up. I can't begin to get my head round what that was all about but laughing at the sight and sound of that complete weapon was a welcome respite from just feeling constantly terrible for poor Matt Furie. That incredibly sweet, beautifully drawn and dialogue free children's book he published that ends with a bunch of animals looking at a sunrise after their wholesome adventure. Of course, he had to make a bloody frog the main character of that as well, didn't he? Frogs on the brain, that bloke.

The Mollusk

Yeah I have never given any real time to understanding how cryptocurrency works at all so that shit was fucking baffling to me.

Regardless of this, despite being able to fully fathom the bizarre but predictable way in which all of this took off from such a tiny and innocuous point, the humanising aspect of the whole thing was very saddening. Imagine being the artist that got swept up in something like that. If I put a song on my SoundCloud and one small part of it - the way a synth chord perfectly compliments a snare roll in the bridge section - suddenly became utilised as a battle cry for a fucking civil war or something, and there was basically nothing I could do about it, I would probably lose my mind.


Retinend


samadriel


Retinend


Icehaven


Retinend


Retinend

Oh cool! Crossover with Office Hours with Tim Heidecker: interview with Furie and the documentary makers (go to 30 minutes in) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJUmqGurRqk

Retinend

Watching that interview made me feel a little guilty. If you want to chip in, then here is the paypal:



and here is proof that it's a genuine paypal address:

https://schedule.sxsw.com/2020/films/2026744


Retinend


Retinend

Anyone watched TFW NO GF yet? It's got the same "Eggman" guy from Feels Good Man in it and basically serves as a deep dive on the 4chan subculture that forms the antagonist of the latter narrative.  The menacing aspects are not avoided, but it takes a more sympathetic tone towards them, and it is clear that there is a lot of squandered promise among this strange tribe of self-conscious outcasts. It reminds one of the protagonist "Underground Man" in Dostoyevsky's "Notes From Underground", and I suppose that that character was something of an incel himself.

My favourite character was "KANTBOT", the 4chan philosopher who claims to be an expert in German idealism and delights in the fact that people tie themselves in knots failing to determine his exact political views. I thought I knew something about the topic, insofar as German idealism lead on from cartesian rationalism and British empiricism, and pointed the way for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but I admit that he must be much too smart of a philosopher for me, for I could not comprehend a single statement he made in the doc.
https://twitter.com/kbultra0?lang=en


I got 35 minutes in. I haven't deleted it, I'll try to finish it one day.
Every generation has it's disillusioned, angry young men and by fuck if this generations aren't the most staggeringly boring.
Yeah, I felt like the doc was trying to make them sympathetic rather than just pathetic but I couldn't quite get on board. Will give it another shot.


jamiefairlie

Quote from: ImmaculateClump on September 30, 2020, 10:09:02 AM
I got 35 minutes in. I haven't deleted it, I'll try to finish it one day.
Every generation has it's disillusioned, angry young men and by fuck if this generations aren't the most staggeringly boring.
Yeah, I felt like the doc was trying to make them sympathetic rather than just pathetic but I couldn't quite get on board. Will give it another shot.

I don't think it's too different to my student days, only then they had a limited audience to their bullshit, safety contained to the student union happy hour. Now they are encouraged to think their voice matters by all their mirror images around the world

Mister Six

And it's easier for someone on the cusp of this kind of thing to get pulled into it now, whereas before there was a chance that they might make friends with people who'd get them out of the rut, or at least form friendships that aren't based totally around feelings of insecurity, alienation, entitlement and misogyny.

C_Larence

Feels Good Man is on BBC Four tonight at 10PM as part of the BBC's Storyville strand.

Retinend

Quote from: ImmaculateClump on September 30, 2020, 10:09:02 AM
I got 35 minutes in. I haven't deleted it, I'll try to finish it one day.
Every generation has it's disillusioned, angry young men and by fuck if this generations aren't the most staggeringly boring.
Yeah, I felt like the doc was trying to make them sympathetic rather than just pathetic but I couldn't quite get on board. Will give it another shot.

Necroposting, but I rewatched the film recently and, second time around, I was also a lot more of your mind, that it was trying to hard to make the subjects sympathetic.

Looking into it a little, the director, Alex Lee Moyer, made friends with these sorts people in one particular depressing corner of twitter,  and made these acquaintances and produced the film while in a period of depression herself (not stated but inferred). Knowing in retrospect that she was present at the January 6th insurrection this year makes me wonder whether her radicalisation took place during filming (hence in the following interview) or afterwards.

She doesn't speak coherently, and this seems to exhaust the interviewer, as it did me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKrd4Y0rPD8
Prime Video SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection Q&As: TFW NO GF
13,347 views Apr 27, 2020