Developed in 1987, the software program, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, was an inspiration for a generation. Now two queer filmmakers — director Jazmin Jones and associate producer and protagonist Olivia McKayla Ross — have made a hybrid documentary about their DIY search for Renée L’Esperance, the model who was the face of it, that premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Jones is one of Mavis Beacon’s greatest fans, she said. As she remembers, when it became available, users were just beginning to become familiar with computers.
“The idea of having one in your home was a very new concept that was scary to a lot of people,” Jones told Georgia Voice. “This software Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing helped users using very early AI to improve their typing speed. Initially, a Black woman was on the cover who modeled for the software, and this is the first time you ever had a Black person on the cover of any software. It was also one of the first times they had anthropomorphized a character to make it seem like you were talking to a human on the other end.”
The two believe Mavis Beacon is the biggest cultural figure in technology and also the most significant woman in the field. The software itself was immensely popular, selling 10 million copies and used in school curriculums, like Jones’ elementary school.
“She has touched a lot of people’s lives, and there are still a lot of people who think she is a real person,” Jones said.
Two years into Jones’ research and development on this project, she encountered Ross as an 18-year-old theorist and technologist.
“[Ross] was developing amazing language that was so useful in terms of how I was thinking of Mavis Beacon,” she said. “I sent a DM asking if Olivia wanted to collaborate and the rest is history.”
Neither woman realized it would take six years to make the film.
“I think the biggest thing that drug everything out was the pandemic and how it put limitations on our body and activities and the extra things that had to go into every shoot,” Ross said. “We moved on our subject’s timeline and not ours, and that changed the movies and gave us more space to play and experiment. I definitely don’t regret how long it took.”
According to Jones, the audience watches as she and Ross grow up in the film.
“We start the project bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with ideas about what is right and wrong and as the investigation goes on, our own ethical boundaries are confronted,” she said. “It’s also a film about representational politics and the limitations of representation. There is a breaking point in the movie where we say there is only so much we can do with this fictional character, and we have to decide how far we want to proceed. The goal of the film changes, and that is something I did not anticipate.”
Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman” was an inspiration for “Seeking Mavis Beacon,” a template for the filmmakers putting themselves on camera and looking for a Black historical figure.
Recently, the two showed the film in Oakland, and Dunye moderated a panel. Jones calls it a sweet full circle moment.
“When I talk about what ‘The Watermelon Woman’ did for me, I think what is so powerful about that piece is that — spoiler alert — The Watermelon Woman is not real and Cheryl Dunye is looking for a fictional character, and the movie ends with this idea that sometimes you have to create your own history,” Jones said. “Cheryl made her own archive for the Watermelon Woman, but what I love is that the archive extends into her being a happy, elderly woman. You get to see this Black queer icon living her best life and it is so rare. Usually, in queer representation it does not end well for the gay characters and so seeing she had imagined a happily ever after for a woman who had been misrepresented was a beautiful gesture.
Jones is excited that the film is getting a release at the current moment and time.
“I think people accepting it as queer cinema is heartening because it doesn’t center around a romantic love plot,” she said. “It is a platonic love story of two queers running around being mischievous.”
For Ross, she feels that so much of a queer lived existence is abandoning the script and the stereotypical heterosexual idea of what a person’s life should look like.
“Seeking Mavis Beacon” is now playing in theaters.