Seeking Mavis Beacon
Investigates the disappearance and reexamines the legacy of one of the most influential Black women in technology.
Seeking Mavis Beacon, Jazmin Jones
Seeking Mavis Beacon (2024) is a fun, bright and vibrant film that attempts to explore challenging subject matters and serves as a reminder that questions don’t always have answers, and missing people aren’t always lost. Premiering at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, the movie illustrates the importance of information sharing (did you know the world’s first consumer facing digital assistant was a dark-skinned Black woman who crawled so Siri, Alexa and Cortana could walk, because I sure didn’t) and the growing movement to reveal and reverse the erasure of Black women and their achievements.
Filmmaker Jazmin Jones, and her “cyber doula” friend of Black Girls Code fame, Olivia Ross, set out to find the face of software programme Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, explore the impact the teaching game had on those who played it (they set up a hotline for people to tell their stories and share their memories) and the legacy of representation and accessibility it created.
Moving cross country and setting up headquarters in a rented garage, (how Silicone Valley coded) the women track down Walt Bilofsky and Joe Abram, two of the three men responsible for creating the programme before its release in 1987, to score information about the game’s cover star.
Her name is Renee L’Esperance, a Haitian lady approached whilst working in a department store, and whilst it is unclear how she came to be in America, if she left soon after and where she is now, we do know she was paid a one-off sum of $500 for the use of her likeliness. This is despite Americans buying over six million copies of the game in the 11 years after its release, it being one of the most successful educational tools of all time and the creators pocketing $400 million dollars upon its sale. A classic case of Black women being undercut for their cultural contributions.
“A classic case of Black women being undercut for their cultural contributions.”
The narrative is interspersed with viral clips about the internet, that we have all seen and cite, that appear in pop-up window form in the way an uninvited advert would on your computer - clever artistry and complimentary editing decisions that reinforce the technological tale being told.
Algorithms, programming, our digital footprint, consent and control over what information of ours appears on the web and for how long, are all topics referenced in the film, but it was the discussion on if/how we can separate technologies from their creators that I found most alarming. These systems are still primarily made by white men with all their inherent biases and prejudices, and the realisation, perhaps belatedly, that not only must we contend with their human gaze but learn to circumvent their coded one too, was terrifying.
When interviewing the developers, Jones fails to follow up on or question why they were so determined to have a Black woman on the cover, but it would be interesting to know if their conviction that it would be a good marketing strategy had anything to do with their preconceived ideas about Black women and service roles.
Seeking Mavis Beacon is a film filled with music, dance, hair braiding and all the other things young Black women do and enjoy when they are trying to live their lives. Critics argue personal footage of Jazmin and Olivia is superfluous, irrelevant to the quest to find L’Esperance, but I’d counter that the inclusion of the clips is a powerful reminder that Black women are so much more than our work and deserve rest and respite too.
The beauty of the feature is found in its chaotic and haphazard nature. 26 years on from the last sighting of her, Renee L’Esperance remains missing, elusive to a world that suddenly cared about her existence. No happy ending for the plot, sometimes things don’t add up or work out, and that’s okay.
Release Date: May 9th, 2025
Directed by Jazmin Jones
Written by Jazmin Jones
Produced by Guetty Fellin
Starring Jazmin Jones, Olivia McKayla Ross
Cinematography by Yeelen Cohen
Distributor: Neon
Runtime: 102 minutes.