‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ Offers True Crime, AI And Feminism

What’s it like to search for someone who doesn’t want to be found?

Filmmaker Jazmin Jones and co-collaborator Olivia McKayla Ross find that answer through their debut “Seeking Mavis Beacon,” documenting their five-year search for the woman who was the face of the original Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing program: Renée L’Espérance.

If you’re a child of the late ‘80s and ‘90s, odds are you were a pupil of the 1987 gamified typing program created by The Software Toolworks. Mavis Beacon, the Black woman who was the face of the digital software, represented one of the earliest uses of artificial intelligence available to the public and had a significant foundational role in many millennials’ relationship with digital technology. And to many folks’ surprise, she isn’t real.

But L’Espérance is. The Software Toolworks paid L’Espérance, a Haitian American woman, just $500 to be the face of a program that went on to sell more than 10 million copies.

“Seeking Mavis Beacon” attempts to tell L’Espérance’s story while exploring Black people’s relationship with an ever-evolving digital world that makes it so easy to find anyone. Through spirituality, memes, cross-country trips and Jones and Ross’ own friendship, this film sheds light on something we often forget about as we become more chronically online: our own autonomy.

“This film is an offering [to Renée],” Jones said during a Zoom interview, citing Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological work. “Before you can expect anyone to give you their story or their testimonial, you first give them an offering acknowledging that this is an exchange at best, extractive at worst. It’s just taking on that lineage of Zora. This is just the first step of first giving gratitude and saying ‘thanks’ and ‘I see you.’ And then the door is always open to continue this conversation or have others.”

Jones began working on the film in 2019 before bringing Ross on for her research expertise in 2020. Their views, emotions, struggles and friendship are on full display in the documentary, making their search for L’Espérance even more compelling. They are simultaneously storytellers and subjects.

Jones said the film, produced by filmmaker Guetty Felin, feels like “binge-watching true crime documentaries while scrolling on Critical Race Theory TikTok,” while Ross called it “a cyberfeminist road movie.”

Ross said their intention was always to be experimental and weird in the film. They wanted their approach to feel in line with how they approach the internet, using “desktop realism” as a guide.

“There was always this expectation that we were not going to do like, normal, basic-ass shit with the documentary form,” Ross said. “The main things that did have to evolve were us responding to the kind of dual movie that we were in. On one side, we wanted to have all of these conversations that we were having with each other about maybe speaking about the genesis of extractive AI technologies and this relationship between Black people and their images. But then trying to combine that conversation with this huge question mark around Renée’s involvement in the project.”

Though the project is grounded in L’Espérance’s story, “Seeking Mavis Beacon” gets personal with Jones and Ross. We see Ross’ challenges in juggling the film, her schoolwork and preparing for college. We see Jones deal with the many obstacles of being a first-time filmmaker with finite resources. We also see them pray, spellcast and lean on spirituality in their search for L’Espérance. Jones describes “Seeking Mavis Beacon” as a “coming-of-age movie.” And it evolved as much as Jones and Ross did.

“I was a little naive at the beginning of the project, ’cause I’m like, ‘representation matters,’” Jones said. “And… as Olivia and I were doing the research, we’re like, ’Oh shit, no wonder nobody ever found Renée, ’cause they’re projecting all of these like weird ideas onto her, so they’re not looking in the right places. And I was like, two young Black femmes have never searched for her, so that’s why she hasn’t spoken to the public.”

That wasn’t quite the case, though.

In the film, the audience witnesses Jones and Ross’ approach to looking for L’Espérance shift over time. The more they learn about her story, her lawsuit against The Software Toolworks for misusing her image and how creators did — or didn’t — “discover” her, the less likely it seems they will actually find her. The less likely it seems that she even wants to be found.

“There’s something to be said for reclaiming your image,” she explained. “And so, yeah, instead of being like, ‘Representation matters and everyone needs to tell their story,’ I’m like, ‘Actually, there’s something to be said for, like, holding on to your story and remembering that [it] is yours to tell, or not.’ So that’s kind of where I’ve arrived.”

“Seeking Mavis Beacon” was released in select theaters in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Oakland on Aug. 30. It’s evident that Jones and Ross haven’t actually found L’Espérance — though they do hope for her to receive her flowers “in whatever form she wants them to appear.”

However, as more intimate parts of our lives progressively begin to spill into the digital sphere, the conversation the filmmakers have within and around this film is significant.

“At the beginning of the movie and earlier in my life, Mavis Beacon was very much the role model that I needed. I needed to see that. I needed to have Black women welcome me into this digital space. That was so foundational,” Jones said. “But now that I’m online, perhaps too much to a fault, the role model that I need is Renée. And I need reminders that there are people who are maintaining their autonomy that you can’t obtain from the automatic checking of the [terms and conditions] box and signing up.”

“Seeking Mavis Beacon” is in select theaters now.