Film Review: "We Are Pat"

Ro Haber's documentary is the perfect screening to conclude Pride Month, offering a sharp, empathetic, and fascinating look at one of SNL's most famous characters.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.

If you grew up in the 1990s, the chances are pretty good that you saw, at some point or another, the character Pat on Saturday Night Live. The character, created by Julia Sweeney, was hugely popular and appeared in numerous sketches over the years and, like so many of the other most beloved characters, Pat even got their own film, though it has the dubious distinction of having a zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes (not exactly a badge of honor). More than perhaps any other character the show ever created, Pat challenged viewers (and characters) to think outside of the gender binary. Every time a character in a sketch couldn’t ascertain Pat’s gender–no matter how hard they might try and no matter how ingenious they thought they were being in their investigative methods–both characters and audience became more aware of just how silly the whole notion of gender has always been.

We Are Pat, the new documentary focusing on the character and their legacy, interrogates the role that this character has played in the American imagination, both in the 1990s and in the years since. We hear from various queer, nonbinary, and trans writers and creators, some of whom see Pat as an icon, some who see them as a source of pain, and some who see them as an inescapable bit of both. We also get remarkable insight from Sweeney herself, who not only sheds light on how she came to create and embody the character but also reveals the extent to which Pat has continued to be a part of her life (among other things, she also has several pieces of the Pat costume still in her private collection).

The film is equal parts cultural history and personal reflection. Both director Ro Haber and their team of writers and creators grapple with Pat and whether Pat can either be reclaimed as an icon or even be put into new sketches or whether the character should be largely dismissed as a relic of a bygone era when terms like “nonbinary” were almost unheard-of and when mocking queer folk of any kind was the norm. The documentary stages some difficult and important conversations, and I really enjoyed getting to see queer, nonbinary, and trans folks of various generations contend with Pat and their various meanings. Though they come down on different sides of the question–with Joey Soloway being particularly strident in their criticism of Pat as both mocking of nonbinary and trans people and also neurodivergent folks–they all meaningfully acknowledge just how complicated this character has been and remains.

One of the things the documentary does very well is give insight into the unique set of circumstances–both in terms of the culture more generally and in terms of SNL in particular–that gave rise to a character like Pat. Just as importantly, the documentary also highlights just how popular Pat became, and it’s really quite extraordinary the extent to which so many folks have taken Pat to their hearts, complexity and all. When it comes to a character like this, there are really no easy answers, and I found it refreshing the extent to which We Are Pat is willing to sit with some of the irresolvable tensions that Pat evokes. Given just how strange and perplexing gender has always been, this seems particularly appropriate.

Director Haber walks a fine line between various emotional registers, and the film is as much a love letter to Pat as it is a reckoning with the character’s legacy and Haber’s complicated relationship with them. There are some moments of pain and frustration–particularly concerning the Pat film, which really does go out of its way to subject the character, and those who identify with them, to public humiliation–but there are just as many that are truly hilarious. I particularly enjoyed the new sketch, which brilliantly stays true to the core of the Pat character while also showing how they can, indeed, be updated for today’s comedic sensibility.

A remarkable shift occurs near the end of the doc, when Sweeney herself comes to the writers room and talks in moving depth about what playing the character meant for her. As she remarks, playing Pat–who refused to play by the rules of gendered behavior and normality and binarism–she was able to escape from some of the imprisoning confines of the gender ideology of the late 20th century. Sweeney is of course endearing, and it’s a lovely moment of honest conversation, engagement, and even reconciliation. Pat, it turns out, still means many things to many people, and both the woman who brought them to life and the many queer, trans, and nonbinary folk who have seen themselves in Pat, for good and for ill.

That, in the end, is the thing about a character like Pat. For all that we try to pin them down, we constantly find that they’re as slippery and unpindownable as they’ve ever been. One can’t help but wonder whether we, like the many characters who find their efforts to determine Pat’s gender, are ourselves the butt of the joke. Maybe the thing about Pat, the thing that gives them the charge they still possess–even now, so long after the character first appeared on the small screen–is the fact that they still can’t be pinned down. They elude and they challenge and they mystify, and I think the documentary teases out the many complexities of Pat.

We Are Pat is a truly remarkable piece of documentary filmmaking. It challenges us to think in new ways about how pop culture objects from a different period of history can continue to exert an influence far beyond their original point of creation. Sometimes, we just have to sit with the fact that comedy of the past makes us uncomfortable, and that there can be power and even enlightenment in that discomfort. As we as a society continue to grapple with the many strange, beautiful, and unexpected meanings of gender, sexuality, and identity, it seems pretty likely that Pat will still have much to teach us.