November 22, 2019
'Was I the Al Jolson of Androgyny' Wonders Julia Sweeney about Pat, Her 90s 'SNL' Character
READ TIME: 3 MIN.
One of the most iconic characters from "Saturday Night Live" in the 1990s hasn't aged well.
Pat, the gender and sexually ambiguous comic invention of then-cast member Julia Sweeney, first appeared on the show in 1990 for a four-year run that ended with a movie, "It's Pat," a resounding critical and commercial flop whose release coincided with her leaving the show.
The character has pretty much been forgotten, but this week Pat has returned to the public consciousness, and not in a positive way.
"Over the years, Pat has become a cultural cudgel used to mock those with unfamiliar gender expressions – an all-purpose insult hurled at people who do not fit conventional definitions of masculinity or femininity," writes the Times.
Abby McEnany, the star and co-creator of the upcoming Showtime series "Work in Progress," recalls being called "Pat" because she resembles Sweeney's sexual ambiguous character. (
"That sucked, because it was never a compliment," McEnany told the newspaper. "It was aggressive. It was bigotry." Even in the bathroom of a lesbian bar, McEnany said another woman confronted her and said, "Ugh, who are you? Pat?"
"It's like, wow, I can't even find a safe space in what's supposed to be a safe space?" she said.
Jill Soloway, who created the Amazon hit "Transparent," agrees.
The Pat sketches, Soloway told the Times, "were a reflection of how people are expected to adhere to gender stereotypes and 'everybody who doesn't do that is subject to a wide array of bullying and hatred.'"
For her part, Sweeney takes a different view.
"I didn't do that character to make anyone feel bad," she says to the Times. "On the other hand, I created a character and then people happened to look like that character. I'm not responsible if they take it negatively, either. So that's a complicated situation."
She had developed the character in the late 1980s when she was part of the Los Angeles comedy group The Groundlings, and used the character when she auditioned for "SNL."
"I thought I was going to do it once and be done," she tells the Times. "I didn't know it was going to become this thing that people identified with." But realized over time that the "the character was being used to demean other people – what she called 'the icky part' of the role – became clearer to her."
When her former college sorority asked her to approve of a pledge button with Pat's photo and a caption, "Pledge No Pats," she was appalled.
"What Pat was telling some viewers, Sweeney said, was that 'anyone who doesn't look like a man or a woman is someone we can point at and laugh at.'"
She even includes a pointed self-criticism of herself in her one woman show' target='_blank'> "My God, what did I do? Was I the Al Jolson of androgyny?"
"I didn't do that character to make anyone feel bad," she says. "On the other hand, I created a character and then people happened to look like that character. I'm not responsible if they take it negatively, either. So that's a complicated situation."
When developing "Work in Progress," McEnany decided to include a "fictionalized incarnation of Julia Sweeney as a recurring character on the show – one who would be portrayed by the actress, and who McEnany (who is also playing a heightened version of herself) would confront and later befriend," reports the Times.
Sweeney agreed, and the two – while they disagree about Pat, they have become friends. "She and I do not see totally eye-to-eye on Pat, and that's O.K., because I love her," McEnany tells the Times. "She added that, at a time when 'there's so much vitriol, you can be friends and love people that don't think the same things about everything you think about.'"
