So she made Pat androgynous in appearance and oblivious to other people’s uncertainty about Pat’s gender. She said that she based much of the character’s behavior on a socially awkward officemate she worked with as an accountant at Columbia Pictures, who drooled and stood too close to people when he talked.īut Sweeney felt she could not pull off the character if she played Pat as a man. Sweeney created Pat while she was still a member of the Groundlings, the Los Angeles comedy troupe, in the late 1980s. I’m not responsible if they take it negatively, either. “On the other hand, I created a character and then people happened to look like that character. But she does not disown the role.Īs Sweeney explained it, “I didn’t do that character to make anyone feel bad,” she said. 8, that reckons with the consequences of Pat. While audiences and performers can be reluctant to have these debates, Sweeney is open to further consideration of her work and she plays herself in a story line on “Work in Progress,” which premieres on Dec.
The problem of Pat represents an increasingly persistent debate in comedy: What happens when a joke, character or routine is re-examined outside of the era in which it was made and is deemed insensitive by contemporary standards? Should its creator still be held accountable for that material, and what if anything is owed to audiences who may have been offended or hurt by it?Ĭomedies are continually revisited with fresh eyes and subjected to new scrutiny, whether the 1980s-era teen movies of John Hughes, which have been reproached for male chauvinism, or TV shows like “The Simpsons,” where the character of Apu has been criticized for perpetuating racist stereotypes. “As a person, of course I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” she said.īut, she added, “As an artist, I don’t want to never hurt anyone’s feelings.”
More sincerely, Sweeney said in a recent interview that she took this criticism seriously and empathized with anyone who was insulted in this way. As she asks herself in her one-woman show, “My God, what did I do? Was I the Al Jolson of androgyny?” Sweeney is well aware of Pat’s complicated legacy and the pain that the character represents to many people. The Pat sketches, Soloway said, 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.”
Jill Soloway, the creator of the Amazon series “Transparent,” said that Pat typified a dehumanized depiction of real people. “It’s like, wow, I can’t even find a safe space in what’s supposed to be a safe space?” she said.
It was bigotry.” Even in the bathroom of a lesbian bar, McEnany said another woman confronted her and said, “Ugh, who are you? Pat?”
“That sucked, because it was never a compliment,” McEnany said. 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.Ībby McEnany, the co-creator and star of the Showtime comedy series “Work in Progress,” said she has been called Pat because she is a lesbian who happens to resemble the character. Sweeney played the role in more than a dozen sketches that placed Pat in everyday settings - a gym, a drugstore, a barbershop - and in parodies of films like “Basic Instinct” and “The Crying Game.” Pat became one of the most popular “S.N.L.” characters of the 1990s, with help from an opening jingle whose lyrics asked viewers to “accept him or her” for “whatever it might be - it’s time for androgyny, here comes Pat.”īut the character also has an ugly underside that its creator never intended.