If you’re of a certain generation, you probably remember Mavis Beacon. Her smiling face was the logo – the literal beacon, if you will – for “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing,” a software designed to teach typing skills through game-like lessons.
There was a time you might have thought that Mavis Beacon was a real person. But she wasn’t. The actress posing as Mavis Beacon on the cover of the software changed throughout the years, but one thing remained constant. She was always a Black woman. The first and the most famous woman who portrayed Mavis was named Renée L’Espérance, a Haitian-born model who was discovered behind a perfume counter in Saks. Or so the story goes.
“Seeking Mavis Beacon,” a movie from director Jazmin Jones, aims to uncover the real story behind the computer software. In taking on the endeavor of tracking down L’Espérance, Jones and her collaborator/producer Olivia McKayla Ross explore Black identity in the digital age. They eventually hit a road block, however, when it seems that L’Espérance doesn’t want to be found. With that road block, the two have to tackle tough questions about on and offline privacy, how we treat the technology designed to serve us, and how we manage our digital footprint.
Jones first became aware of Ross in 2018 while editing a video of a class that Ross taught on her 18th birthday about cyberfeminism. It was in this class that Ross came up with the term “cyber doula,” a word that helped Jones understand her relationship to Mavis Beacon. Jones reached out to Ross and asked if she would like to join a documentary project about Mavis, and six years later, “Seeking Mavis Beacon” was born.
The film played at the Plaza Theatre on Sept. 10, and the following day Rough Draft Atlanta was able to interview both Jones and Ross about the making of the film and how they approach identity online. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I wanted to kind of start off by asking you about the disclaimer at the beginning of the film. The disclaimer states that the film is subjective, etc. Why did you make the decision to include that in the film?
Jazmin Jones: I wish every documentary had a disclaimer, honestly. It definitely was the function of us trying to include all of this different internet ephemera and clips and everything. That was something we worked out with legal, because I was like wait – I want to be able to play with critical fabulation and this idea of appropriation. Initially, they were like, what if you put the disclaimer on top of the clip? And I was like wait, no – audiences are really smart. Rather than watching just a few clips really critically, I wanted them to watch the whole film with that kind of lens. What is real? What’s happening here?
There’s no such thing as a documentary, right? Every decision is informed by the positionality of the person who’s making the film – where you put the camera, where you cut. So, the disclaimer, to me, is a nice way of just waking audiences up and saying, hey – none of this makes sense. We’re using a lot of legalese and art speak, as most people are in this industry. In that way, I actually think it makes it feel more truthful, right? Something about acknowledging the artifice makes everything else feel more honest to me. But then again, I have a reverence for trolling to some extent. Silly, benign, light, non-hateful trolling, I enjoy [laughs].
It’s funny you bring up the legalese and art speak aspect of it, because that was something that really struck me. Parts of this are very scientific and computer and tech driven, and then parts of it are so artistic. I had never really seen those two worlds fused together like that. I thought it was very interesting in terms of identity in the cyber age – we talk about art in terms of identity a lot, but not really about tech. Something you said at the screening, Olivia, during the Q&A really stuck with me – that algorithms get to know you based on a past version of yourself and make it very difficult for you to move on from that past version of yourself. That’s interesting in how the greater public views someone like Mavis Beacon, like Renée L’Espérance. She’s always stuck in that version of herself. I wondered, for both of you, how do you – for lack of a better term – deal with something like that in the digital age? How do you explore your identity or evolve when you’re stuck in that mold?
Jones: That’s a great question. Also, Olivia was spitting last night. [Laughs] I was like, bars.
Yeah, you said that and I felt like my whole life flashed before my eyes, digitally.
Olivia McKayla Ross: I feel like I actually learn a lot from you [Jones] and your relationship to social media platforms when it comes to identity –like, making really active decisions about that.
Jones: But I feel like my representation online stems from a stubbornness. It’s very much like, Tumblr girly, operating under [the assumption that] this will all be here forever, right? There’s a certain pressure. I don’t know. I think your digital footprint, there’s something more playful around how you use the internet. And also, I feel trapped, right? The way that I use Instagram is the same way I’ve been using Instagram for like, a decade. For me, the only way out is through exploring new platforms and new websites and new technology. The most refreshing thing for me, as a millennial, has been getting on TikTok and being like, oh my god! I’m not out for pasture! I get it! And me trying to convince other millennials too – Reels is not the same thing!
I used to talk about, I’m not an early adopter, because that scared me … I felt myself aging faster. So now I just try to lean in, even if I don’t understand how technology works. My favorite app in the world is BeReal. I hope it doesn’t get deleted because no one is using it.
Ross: You’ve been real longer than so many people.
Jones: What’s your relationship to all this? Because I feel very fixed. What you were saying resonated to me – I am the same person I’ve always been. I use the same four social media platforms. It’s not like I’m surfing the web like I used to.
Ross: I went ghost on Instagram for like, two years. Up until we went to Sundance. My last post before that was in 2022. So once I did that, I kind of was like, I can post anything now – in the sense of, it’s literally been two years. A lot of people probably forgot. I was using stories, but I wasn’t posting to grid. I feel like [after] that really long break, I just didn’t have the same headspace I had towards posting before.
Jones: Actually, we do have that in common. I’ve definitely taken gaps of like, six months.
Ross: Once you get that gap, it really hits refresh.
Jones: I think Olivia and I … we feel very comfortable. We’ve retreated, which makes a lot of sense, also, with how much we respect Renée’s choices. We love her choice. But also, I think it’s okay to come back. It’s okay to fail.
Ross: I also feel like the social media platforms that I am most attracted to … a lot of them aren’t social platforms. The places on the internet that I spend the most time on – I mean, Pinterest is becoming more of a social network – but I spend a lot of time on Pinterest, Are.na, kind of idea, research-y spaces. Even Tumblr, it’s a social network, but it’s to read people’s blogs. And for a large part, most people on Tumblr are still anonymous. There are some people on Tumblr, who their digital identity and their personal identity are fixed. But one thing that I find has helped keep my relationship with the internet really fluid is that I have multiple usernames. A lot of people in 2024, they only have one username, and they use it everywhere. Sometimes it’s even their real name. [Laughs]
I feel called out.
Ross: I feel like having a Rolodex of alter egos that are for different platforms [is good]. My Tumblr username is unrelated to any other platform that I have an identity on …Part of it is there’s a fragmentation that happens. Do you lean into the fragmentation so that you can be the different parts of yourself? Or do you resist the fragmentation and then you become one thing?
Jones: I think in that way, I flatten myself. What you’re talking about is great, because when you wipe the slate clean, I imagine you also get clear algorithms. They have to collect new data.
Ross: There’s a place in settings where you can actually delete. On Pinterest I do this a lot … I was into this in 2020. Let’s actually refresh this, and you can fine tune it. Similarly, I think even on Instagram, you can have manual input on what the things you see are. I do try to get into the control panel and move things around.
Talking about Renée, and coming to the realization that maybe she doesn’t want to be found – which I feel is really well-seeded throughout the movie, and is something I was thinking about before it even comes up between you guys – something you said, Jazmin, towards the end of the film stuck with me. It was along the lines of, “I’ve always thought that the solution would be for everybody to tell their version of the story,” but then coming to the realization of, but what if they don’t want to? I wondered if you could elaborate on that realization coming to you, and reckoning with how someone else might approach the truth. Because I think that’s a lot of what this movie is about, different approaches to truth and telling that story.
Jones: The audience is along for the ride with us. This is a truism that’s sinking in, and it’s something I’ve always believed, which is, you should tell your own story. The only story you can tell is your own. And that’s something we see a lot in the writing world, right? Which is before you get to writing about other people, you first gotta get through your own personal history. I think the process is me coming to know that on an intrinsic level, where at the beginning I’m like – Olivia and I are telling our stories, but also, we’re creating an opportunity and giving a platform to this person who maybe hasn’t been given a platform before. And at the end, you see me realize, okay – just because you give someone a platform doesn’t mean they’re gonna step onto it, right? And that’s okay.
There were a million different versions we imagined – we don’t find her, more morbid endings and stuff. But the version where there is no answer is not really something we actually considered. This ending is the unknown.
Ross: Yeah, because we didn’t get a yes and we didn’t get no.
Jones: But it forces us – Olivia and I, we know better, right? Deep down. The absence of a yes and the absence of an enthusiastic yes is a no. These are things that Olivia and I have always known politically. And then the movie has given us an opportunity to really work through, how long do you let a question hang in the air before you accept that the other person is not going to answer that question? And that is the answer. Obviously, we wanted a yes, and at a certain point it was just like, please just give us a no, even.
Circling back to the statement Olivia says early in the film – before the film has even begun, when she’s teaching that class on her 18th birthday – we have to start treating our conspiracy theories as intuition. The conspiracy theory being, oh damn – what if she doesn’t want to talk to us? At a certain point, we have to also accept that. In addition to all our conspiracy theories around the mistreatment and misrepresentation of Renée, that also becomes our truth. Our intuition around how she feels about it, that has to be our truth. That’s the closest we get to it. And I feel resolved in that.
As a first time filmmaker too … I had so many critiques for every movie I ever watched before this – I wouldn’t do it like that, it’s not very good, it’s not politically thorough. Now that I’ve tried to make a movie, I’m like, wow, it’s really hard! So I’ve learned a lot, both about the filmmaking process and also hitting the limitations of these truisms that Olivia and I talk about online, about how you show up for people. This was the test, and there were times that I might have failed that test, if I didn’t have Olivia as a partner. I think that’s some comfort of the film that we’ve chosen to include, is that the audience is also watching me kind of crash out and be like, wait – how far are you gonna take this? I also wanted to strike that balance, where the audience feels comfortable that we are doing everything we can in our power, and also that the audience doesn’t feel uncomfortable that we’re doing too much.
Ross: You know that one line where we’re kind of joking, and we’re like oh, the difference between a detective movie and a stalker movie. But a lot of people don’t think about how there are people in our society who have sanction from the state to just pull up at your house. It’s actually really crazy. The level of intimacy that we accept from two well-meaning, loving Black femmes versus two police officers is so [different]. I feel like that was an angle I really appreciated talking about, in terms of who gets called a stalker and who is not.
Jazmin, you talked about being a first time filmmaker and the limitations that you discovered. I was reading an interview with both of you where you talked about Henrietta Lacks, and wanting to try and get her in the film somewhere, because of the similarities between the stories. I wondered if there was anything else like that – you’ve also discussed the other women who played Mavis Beacon over the years – that you wanted to get into the film, but there just wasn’t enough room.
Ross: I mean, the employees of Software Toolworks, we had the opportunity to talk to so many more than we showed the film. We eventually just had to stop, because it would change the subject of the film, to spend so much time talking about Software Toolworks. It would become the Software Toolworks documentary, even though they had so much to say, specifically about the creation of Mavis Beacon … There’s just many layers of history of “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing” that I think we definitely want to make space for.
Jaz and I are working on a book or a zine to compile a lot of the research. I would be really interested in if there would be, like, an excerpt from “Barracoon” in there – kind of talking about the different methodologies and the research that goes behind, how do you conduct an investigation without leaning on this very patriarchal, carceral detective tradition?
Jones: We edited the desktop montages last, and so in that way, I was able to kind of [put clips together that didn’t make it elsewhere in the film]. There were some really basic ideas that I thought the audience might need, aligned kind of with Henrietta Lacks. Do they need to know what a mammy is, in order to unpack? There was a whole desktop where we were considering showing the messed up ways in which people talk to Mavis Beacon, and the way in which she is sexualized. At a certain point, I wasn’t having fun editing that. I had a bunch of clips of people yelling at their Siri, and Alexa, or Cortana, so we could see the ways in which people mistreat their technology, and how that parallels the mistreatment of Black people. I was like, yeah, I’m not having fun anymore. And I don’t think my audience would have fun watching this. We’ve all yelled at Siri, we know what that looks like.
A more fun thing that we didn’t get to fully unpack, that was such a phenomenon that I still haven’t figured out how I feel about, is the replacement and recasting of Aunt Jemima. Of course, it was a problematic image. They recast her, now you can’t get the bottles with Aunt Jemima. Initially, when they talked about recasting, I was like, oh that’s great – good, they should. Then it’s like, wait, the bottles are disappearing? Now I want to buy one on eBay and collect it. I have all these TikToks of people filling up their empty Aunt Jemima bottles with syrup because they don’t want to let it go. There was something [about that] to me, that parallel of being like, she’s a problematic figure, but we are not giving her up!
I think that the image of Aunt Jemima is even more problematic than Mavis Beacon. While there are similarities, I don’t know that Mavis Beacon was a mammy, cut and dry, in the same ways. You can draw those comparisons, right? I like the term cyber doula. But Aunt Jemima, that’s a whole different ballpark. Those clips are just wild … But for the most part, the film is so dense, most everything I bookmarked in the span of three years did make it into the movie.
Ross: There’s a lot of tension … Some birth workers, particularly Black birth workers, resist being called doulas, because doula comes from the word for servant. Which is similar to robot, in a way that is very much a head trip to think about.
