‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ Filmmaker Jazmin Jones On Documenting Black Identity In The Digital Age

In Seeking Mavis Beaconfilmmakers Jazmin Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross aim to track down one of the most iconic figures in multicultural education and internet history. With over 10 million copies sold, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typinga 1987 program made by The Software Toolworks, becomes the subject of demystification as the pair aim to analyze the history of the touch-typing program and uncover the true identity of the digital Black woman instructor, Haitian model Renée L’esperance.

Here, Jones talks to Deadline about her experience making the eye-opening documentary and the importance of Black people in the vastly expanding cyber age.

DEADLINE: How did you and Olivia McKayla Ross meet?

JASMINE JONES: I started working on a project in 2018, and at that time I was also heavily into collective organizing with my collective BUFU, By Us For Us. We were holding different spaces and community programming all around this idea of coalition building and solidarity. And on Olivia’s 18th birthday, she came to this alternative school that we were hosting over a summer about cyberfeminism. And that’s where Olivia first coined the term cyber doula, which fascinated me. I was fangirling over Olivia in terms of her as a theorist and as someone who was just so brilliant and providing language that was helping me understand the project that I had been working on for years, where it’s like, “Oh yeah, Mavis Beacon is my cyber doula, and I have experienced data trauma and all the things that happen online have real-life implications.”  So, I was editing this video of Olivia teaching that class, really getting to know her through a screen, and trying to edit her brilliant ideas down, which was quite difficult, but this all started with a DM. We had been orbiting each other and had been fans of each other’s work. But I’m sure there’s a DM somewhere of me being like, “Hey, would you want to join me?” And her being like, “Yes, let’s do it.”

DEADLINE: When I watched this documentary, I started to think about the situation that occurred with Henrietta Lacks; this Black woman in the 1950s essentially had her blood cell samples taken from her and used for various medical testing without her knowledge before she passed or her family’s consent for decades. They didn’t compensate her at all, of course. But here in the documentary, it’s almost similar because there’s not a lot of films, if any, that really delve into Black identity in the intersection of cyber intellectual property. Renée L’esperance, the Black woman behind the face of the Mavis Beacon typing program, got compensated a little for her likeness, but still, it’s something ingrained in pop culture today. Can you talk about the importance of entering this space of Black cyber identity?

JONES: This is a great multifaceted question. I’m glad that you drew the comparison between Henrietta Lacks. She’s definitely someone, as we were building out the [our process]there were so many people that we wanted to reference. Henrietta Lacks is someone who it was like, “Ah, if I could just find a way to shoehorn this into the film…” So I’m glad to hear that you’re connecting that dot because that is someone I do think of in the lineage of Mavis Beacon and the $500 difference. And that does change something though. That transaction and exchange of money does acknowledge something, even if it’s not enough. Naturally, when you hear about a Black woman being done dirty by the industry, it conjures up a million other stories of Black women who, in other industries, have had similar experiences.

I think there are certain people who are surprised that say like, “Oh, how are we talking about identity politics in a film about Mavis Beacon?” And it’s like, “How are we not?” For me and my lens, it’s like, “How are we not thinking about Mavis Beacon through the idea of representational politics?” Because I think that contributed largely to her success. And loosely tying it back, there’s also audiences that are maybe expecting to see a true crime investigation, and they’re not expecting this to be a personal documentary. And it’s hard, if you haven’t seen films like The Watermelon Womanthe idea of two Black, queer femmes inserting their own personal trials and tribulations into this story feels like it’s coming out of left field. But it’s like, no, naturally, why wouldn’t we talk about the fact that Olivia is experiencing medical racism as she’s trying to get to the bottom of her long COVID? This is so linked. Her experience in her body and the obstacles she’s facing at this young age are representative of her entire generation.

So, for me, coming back to that baseline of community organizing, I have to reference the Combahee River Collective and this idea that the personal is political. And so, when you’re talking about an avatar, the personal, anything that comes around that person is political. And then also when you’re talking about the people that are holding the camera and asking the questions, the personal is political. It just felt like a way of being transparent because we were getting into some ethically murky territory here. And I hate when I watch a film and, especially, a documentary that pretends to be objective. So, it was like, let’s put ourselves in this so that also, we can be implicated in this.  And I was talking to a friend in the process of making this film, and I was like, “Oh, I just wish I could meet Renée and learn all these things.” And they’re like, “Well, there’s no version of events. You know more about her than she will ever know about you. And that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” And I was like, “True.” So I think also this documentary is a way of being like, “Hey, Renée, here are these weirdos that are your biggest fans. Here’s the place that we’re coming from when we’re asking these questions.”

DEADLINE: What was the most challenging part about making this documentary?

JONES: The challenge was trying to figure out how much do we balance the investigation and looking into the backstory of Software Toolworks and the creation of Mavis Beacon with the personal. I knew that if I was making my first feature film, I would just want to shoehorn as many radical Black femmes into one movie as I can before I get into trouble. And so there’s that agenda. And then the fact that in order for me to talk about Mavis BeaconI have to pretty much just talk to white people and figure out how much weight I want to give them in this story. There’s a part in the film where you see the developers, there’s some things they say that we know are not true, and there was a question of like, “Oh, do we go back and film that confrontation like a detective would and say, ‘I got you. I know the truth.’” And ultimately, the decision was, well, I don’t know. This isn’t a film about me versus the developers. This is a film about Olivia and I seeking Mavis Beacon. And once we extract the information we can from our sources, it’s no longer about centering their feelings on everything.

DEADLINE: How have your opinions changed on technology since you’ve started and finished the documentary?

JONES: With technology, I’ve always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist. I err more on the side of paranoia than optimism. It was the intention of this film to try to see both sides of the coin because I do think it’s important that Black people continue to engage with cutting-edge technology and build it so that we aren’t misrepresented or left out. Both through the film and my relationship with Olivia, I’ve realized I have a lot more power as a user, and that I don’t have to automatically agree to terms and conditions, and that I can call a data broker and I can clean things up, and I don’t always have to opt in. But if I do want to opt into technology, there’s a lot of ways that I can still maintain my personal autonomy. So yeah, I think I’ve learned more about digital hygiene across the board.

DEADLINE: Was there ever a fear to release the documentary with the ending that it had? I would imagine there were many back and forths about how it’s not really resolved, as Renée’s son tells you both that she’s a very private person who doesn’t want to be contacted.

JONES: There have been so many back and forths. This film has been a six-year ethical spiral. In the film, you watch Olive and I spiral out about the making of the movie, not to the extent that we were constantly in off-camera. I think a lot of people see the ending as there being some sort of a lack of resolution. And they feel that because, frankly, when we stopped filming, I was still confronting that lack of resolution personally. But there were other stages of this project that were so much scarier for me and versions of events that were so much more terrifying. We truly did not know what would happen when we started making this film. And there was a degree of naivete around being like, “We’re going to give her a platform.” And honestly, that whole conundrum of has she been silent or has she been silenced.

We thought that she had been silenced, and we found out otherwise. And initially through that lens, it was like we loved the energy that we started the project out with, and we’ve outgrown who we were and how we’ve grown politically. So ultimately, this is a happy ending for me because this is probably the area of the most growth for us. There was a time when we literally did not know if we were looking for a woman who was no longer living. And so, a part of the reason we included all of that whimsy and ourselves is that we did not know how happy or sad this film would end. So, I’m quite content just considering there was a version of events of like, “Oh God, we’ve already talked about making this movie. Are we doxxing an undocumented person, or is she not alive, or did something much more malicious happen here?”  The ending is definitely maybe one that we personally didn’t expect, but I also feel so grateful that this is where we’ve arrived.

DEADLINE: What’s next for the both of you?

JONES: This film is a repository for all of my hopes, dreams, special interests, and everything else for the past six years and before that. So, I also feel like, as a creator, it’s really nice to put this out into the world and see how it’s received. And Olivia and I have so much more research and archival materials we would like to share with the public about the history of Mavis Beacon. As interdisciplinary artists and filmmakers, I know I’ve learned a lot of lessons, and I put a lot of myself into this. I’m really eager to make more work, and I think I’d like to work in the areas of episodic, narrative and adaptation. I love the medium, and also I think I’ve seen enough of myself on camera for probably a lifetime.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]