WATCH: Was SNL‘s androgynous Pat character offensive? Or secretly empowering?
In documentary 'We Are Pat,' queer & trans comedians unpack the classic sketch character's complicated legacy.
Mark
For many years, Saturday Night Live‘s bread & butter was its roster of recurring characters, many of which took one simple joke and stretched it way beyond its limit.
Especially guilty of that was Julia Sweeney’s Pat, an androgynous oddball who no one knew whether to address as a man or a woman, responding to their prying questions with vague answers that only confused things further.
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“Sorry if I’m a little grumpy, I have really bad cramps,” Pat would say, leading their colleagues to believe they finally had an answer—before adding, I rode my bike over here, and my calf muscles are killing me!”
And that was it! That was the “joke.” But somehow Pat would appear as the star of a dozen sketches across three SNL seasons, and even a movie of their own, 1994’s poorly reviewed box office flop It’s Pat!.
In the early ’90s, mainstream culture was not yet up to speed on trans/nonbinary identities, so most viewers probably didn’t think twice about laughing at someone who didn’t squarely fit into one of two rigid ideas of gender. In today’s world, you can understand how someone might see the Pat sketches’ schtick as problematic or oddly cruel.
However, there are some out there who don’t see Pat as a mockery of gender queerness at all. In fact, they see themselves!
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In his documentary We Are Pat, filmmaker Rowan Haber delves into his own lifelong fascination with the SNL character, using that as on opportunity to explore transness, comedy, and how our resilient community continues to reclaim the narrative, finding joy & empowerment even in dark parts of our past.
Haber specifically remembers his childhood obsession with It’s Pat, which he’d watch over and over. That movie involves Pat finding a paramour in the equally androgynous Chris (The Kids In The Hall‘s Dave Foley), while also thwarting a nosy neighbor (the late Charles Rocket) whose *spoiler alert* own fixation on Pat leads him to cross-dressing.
“It was hilarious,” says Haber, who maybe didn’t understand all the nuances as a middle schooler, but knew if made him laugh. Years and years later, after undergoing his own gender journey, the filmmaker was out with queer friends when he was reminded of Julia Sweeney’s bespectacled, Western-shirt wearing Pat, so he decided to revisit the movie that night.
“I still laughed my *ss off,” he remembers. “But this time I saw something totally different—I saw me!”
In We Are Pat, Haber and a number of other queer and trans comedians and writers—including Murray Hill, Roz Hernandez, Nori Reed, and SNL alum Molly Kearney—set out to unpack Pat’s confusing, complicated legacy, many of whom even dress up in Pat drag and recreate sketches to reclaim them as their own.
Also featured in the doc is Julia Sweeney herself, who was incredibly game to revisit her comic creation and hear Haber & others out as to how Pat might be problematic, inspirational, or both!:
“Without filmmaker Rowan Haber’s Pat obsession, I would never have fully thought through my relationship to Pat—a wildly popular character that I created that unexpectedly struck a nerve in popular culture,” she says in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
Sweeney continues: “I was interviewed over several years for this documentary, never knowing if it would be sympathetic or critical. Much like Pat-self, the documentary is both. I’m so happy I agreed to participate. We Are Pat is so much deeper and richer and more provocative than I ever imagined. And funny. Really, really funny.”
After making its world premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival and traveling to fests all over the country, We Are Pat is now in the middle of limited run at NYC’s DCTV (through June 4; tickets & info here), and will be available for digital rental or purchase via VOD platforms beginning June 23, courtesy of Tribeca Films & Giant Pictures.
Check out the trailer for We Are Pat below:
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