For millions of would-be typing students in the late 1980s through the 1990s, the educational software known as Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing instructed people around the world using a digital typing teacher who was actually a Haitian-born model (real name: Renée L'Espérance), who has since been lost to time. One of those taught by this digital phenomenon was first-time director Jazmin Renée Jones, whose documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon sets out to find the woman behind the corporate creation while also looking at Black representation and misuse in digital spaces.
Jones and her fellow investigator Olivia McKayla Ross work tirelessly for years, becoming close friends in the process and slowly uncovering the truth behind the software, which was developed by three white men who knew more about programming and advertising than the smiling, confident woman featured on the packaging, in the tutorial, and in all of the advertising for this wildly successful product that spawned generations of upgrades.
It’s Jones’ first-person filmmaking style that brings this story to life; this is a personal vision for her. Not only does she appear on camera with Ross as they track down any small clue as to Beacon’s real identity and whereabouts, but she dives deep into a digital culture that would allow profiting from this woman’s image in ways she probably wasn’t entirely aware of.
Seeking Mavis Beacon is funny and insightful, with keen observations about art, activism, technology, identity, and ownership. Jones sees this real woman embodying a fictional character as a key early part of pioneering Black women in the history of teaching and early-days tech. I won’t reveal whether to two find their subject or how it impacts the film’s outcome, but the fact is that they struggle to find someone whose impact on American students should have made her world famous, making her one of the most influential Black women in education. Director Jones’ background is in archiving and organizing, and every bit of that shows through in this probing investigative piece that reveals far more than the life of this product’s cover model; it’s about a lost legacy and the journey toward recovering it.
The film is screening exclusively at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
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