a review of

I'm so torn on this doc because gimme all the rep of actual trans comedians, I have never seen so many in one piece of media, and that rules. But does it have to be in a doc about *Pat*?! Okay I admit that I didn't learn about this character until a few years ago so I didn't grow up with it or have any fuzzy associations with it. But it is obvious that no matter how much Sweeney maintains that the character was not mean-spirited, she still based it on an "annoying" guy she knew who was probably autistic. And she chose character elements she thought were specifically ugly or unattractive, including a fat suit she cheerfully shows off in the doc, where the breasts have been removed. That's um, a fat suit to make a body like mine. That does not feel great. Grace Freud talks a tiny bit about how fat complicates gender and I wish there was more of this than a throwaway line. And then as another review mentions, when they go for "hot Pat" it's all the thin participants doing it. The doc never really interrogates ideas of attractiveness and ugliness, and it really softballs Julia Sweeney on the fatphobic and ableist connotations of this character, maybe because they were so pleased she agreed to be in it in the first place. I think it would have been possible to push harder when they talked to Sweeney about Pat, while acknowledging that they felt an affinity for this character because they were starving for literally any kind of representation. Even if Pat was not intended as mean-spirited, Sweeney went with androgyny because that was the part of the sketch that the audience actually laughed at; but she still seems to be telling herself the audience was laughing with the character and not at the character. What was the core demo of SNL viewers in the mid 90s? Come on. In addition, the writers room and the rest of the cast of the era did not seem to be in on the fact that Pat is not meant to be mean-spirited. The "No, we're supposed to be laughing about the trans panic of the straight people, not at the androgynous character" memo was not received. Sweeney tries to maintain that she didn't really have any idea there were people being harmed by this portrayal and in ways acts like she didn't know that these identities existed, but then ALSO says that kd lang told her "I have lots of Pats in my audience" so I have trouble giving her too much leeway. BUT bring me all the trans comedians talking about being trans! That rules! I feel Pat should be left in the '90s and that cultural context. The documentary seems to eventually come to that conclusion, considering we never actually see the sketches that were being worked on and were the supposed conceit of the thing. Maybe they all aged like milk as much as the MAGA Pat sketch they showed pieces of. It's all kind of vague, they never actually say "We decided not to do this after all" or anything like that. It just kind of ends. There's a small line near the end with.. I'm sorry I watched this at 3 in the morning, I think it was Nori Reed, a transfem comedian talking about being misgendered as they/them. Which is important. But I wish there had been more about social gendering. They had a group of trans writers with a variety of experiences. Like, for some, causing gender confusion is the whole entire goal, and it's not a joke. A doc like this is begging to cover that. (all my stars are for the trans people who are in this, specifically, because I'm starving for discussions of androgyny and nonbinary rep, a little ironic considering the subject matter)