SEEKING MAVIS BEACON Review: An Internet Mystery Unveils a Racial Injustice

I still remember the middle school classroom where I learned to type, on (dating myself here) one of the early generation Apple computers. My mother had gone to the same school; she remembers when it was full of typewriters. But the computer age had begun, and this was how we learned. Just a few years shy of the first typing program, but I remember using one in high school, likely Mavis Beacon, and it's hard to forget that iconic face that helped me learn to do, part of what I'm doing right now, so essential to my work life.

Seeking Mavis Beacon might begin as an internet mystery; a desire by the filmmaker Jazmin Jones to uncover who was the face of one of the most famous computer programs in the world, and what happened to her. But it also becomes about who we are in the age of the internet, when our faces and voices are more public than ever, and what it means to control, or lose control of, that image.

For Jones, Mavis Beacon was one of the few (likely the only) Black female face of a software program; this face helped her, and millions of others, learn one of the most basic and essential skills of the modern era. To have a face that looked like hers, teach her this skill, meant the world to Jones. Mavis Beacon is a childhood hero, and so she enlists tech whiz and fellow Beacon lover Olivia McKayla Ross to help her find out who Beacon was.

These are two very smart, very driven women, full of that youthful determination that will take a running jump over any obstacle, finding any and every way to overcome difficulties to get to the heart of their mystery. Operating out of an officce building, they are atypical version of the conspiracy theorist; their boards are organized, the room is colourful, filled with their vibrant personalities and the clear love they have for their subject. Each wearing a pair of angel wings, this space is as much a temple to Beacon as it is a sanctuary for Jones and Ross, their investigative headquarters and their space to be themselves.

But what we are, is so much of what is perceived online. And that is what they slowly uncover about Mavis Beacon. It doesn't take much digging to learn that their is no actual person by that name, but there was a model who posed for the initial image and packaging. The model herself, then, becomes the mystery - finding out who she was, why she agreed to pose for these photos, and where she is now. Jones and Ross interview two of the original creators of the software, people who worked Toolworks, to find out the truth behind Renée L'Esperance, how her image remains iconic, particularly among a few generations of Black people as a rare Black woman who repredented technology and one of the first representations of A.I.

The film centres on their investigation, but Jones also frequently employs ScreenLife style; partially evoking the look and fonts of the early Apple days and how the Mavis Beacon program would have first looked, but also more contemporary styles of selfies and smartphone-made videos that have become so normalized. Jones is drawing a line between how the first generation of home computer users engaged with an image like Mavis Beacon, and how we put ourselves on the internet today.

Whether this was planned from the outset, or came as an organic part of the process, Jones and Ross reveal much of themselves on screen; for Ross, illness means she sometimes has to pull back on her participation; for Jones, it's about how and when she shows emotions. When she returns from a research trip to find her office almost destoyed, she is devastated, and rightfully upset. She is well aware of how easy it is for her to be labelled the 'angry Black woman', even when she has every right to be angry and her reasoning should not be dismissed. This mirrors much of what is uncovered about how Toolworks, the company that created Mavis Beacon, treated the woman who was the face of their most successful endeavor.

This is not just about tracking down L'Esperence; it's about understanding what it means to be in public, and the necessity of being private, and how we've perhaps lost sight of the latter. While uncovering the mystery of Beacon/L'Esperence is definitely interesting, it's the relationship between Jones and Ross that is the heart of this doc, how their support for each other drives them and gives them comfort, about what it means to them to follow this process that is as much about understanding themselves as meeting their childhood hero.

A few times the energy slumps a little, but Seeking Mavis Beacon is fascinating in both its mystery and how that mystery is uncovered, in how it examines the process of discovering and how to understand the reasons behind why we need to know everything, why we need to put ourselves online, how we control (or do not) our online image, and what it means to walk away.

Seeking Mavis Beacon is now playing in New York, and opens on Friday September 6th in Los Angeles and additional USA cities, from Neon.