My chat with the team of the new documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon at the London Film Festival 2024.
Today, touch typing is considered as natural as breathing, a skill which is practically innate in us thanks to the myriad of screens and QWERTY keyboards we rely upon to interact with the world. However, from the late 1980s through to the early 2000s, it was still a skill one needed to learn, and Mavis Beacon was the one to teach it. She was the face of the software programme launched in 1987 that taught generations how to hit 70 words-per-minute through its digital learning room and mini-games.
It also made a particular impact on computational artist Jazmin Jones, who, along with producer Olivia McKayla Ross, has been Seeking Mavis Beacon or, more specifically, the Haitian-born model Renee L’Esperance who was paid $500 to pose as her. The result is a surprising documentary which offers a fascinating look into an under-remembered icon and keeps a keen eye on how we navigate digital spaces today. I chatted with them both about how the documentary first materialised and their thoughts on navigating life in both physical and virtual worlds.
Could you tell us about how much Mavis Beacon means to you and at what point your interest in her materialised into this documentary trying to find the real figure behind the woman?
Jazmin Jones: At the beginning of this, I would have been like, “Mavis Beacon, I’m interested in her, who is she? Love to know”. But six years later, I really do adore her. I think, considering where I’ve ended up now, she is the singular most important figure, avatar, or character that I encountered in my childhood.
Growing up, I had a learning disability with bad handwriting, and Mavis Beacon taught me how to touch type. This documentary made me realise what a transformative figure in my life she was without really realising it. Have you met anyone else who has uncovered how important she was to them through your documentary?
Olivia McKayla Ross: I’ve definitely found a lot of young people who didn’t necessarily grow up with Mavis Beacon but had this nagging intuition that she existed and reverse-found her as something they wished they had encountered.
A bit like how I was a computer science nerd growing up, and my family took me to see Hidden Figures, and I was sobbing at Janelle Monáe. I think it is a very similar cathartic feeling in encountering Mavis Beacon and doing the whole search. And I have seen it mirrored in young, nerdy women my age in a way that I’ve been finding very special.
Jazmin Jones: Even last night at the screening, people share their personal experiences with us. Like “I grew up in a household where nobody spoke English, and she taught me how to use a computer in a way that no one could”. Or people talk about having very violent experiences with data abuse and getting doxxed or asking us, “How can I remove my digital footprint?”. So, it’s led to a lot of really deep conversations about data trauma that Olivia has been talking about since I met her when she was 18.
On that point, was it always the idea that Mavis Beacon would become a conduit to explore things like data trauma, or did that emerge more naturally through making the documentary?
Olivia McKayla Ross: It came first because we had two years working on the film in development. There’s a Google Doc out there somewhere of pages and pages of this thing and that thing. There was never any sense this was going to be a straightforward documentary.
Jazmin Jones: I think we also knew we can’t hinge everything on finding this woman. We don’t know what happened here. If I find her and we’re not filming, I don’t have a movie. But I can go very deep into conceptualising and thinking about how she relates to figures, like, you know, Henrietta Lacks [The African American woman whose cells, harvested without her consent, have formed a bedrock of modern medical science]. I also didn’t want to just make a talking head documentary but one that felt like a road movie and an adventure where the audience is with us every step of the way.
At the end of the project people were saying, “Wow, we didn’t know how you were going to fit all of these concepts into a movie”. But all the things that we were talking about from day one in terms of race, intersectionality, and AI all came to fruition in the film.
Talking about a road movie, the other thing I was so struck by is how the film combines physical and digital space. I was expecting it to be all online, but you’re equally printing out flyers and handing them to people. As a computational artist and more personally, are your digital and physical lives interchangeable, or do you see them as separate things?
Olivia McKayla Ross: I think seeing them as separate things is a kind of trauma. The compartmentalisation of sitting at a screen or holding my phone and thinking I’m someplace where my body isn’t is a bit of a dissociative relationship to have. I’m not saying that I don’t experience it, but I think it’s a dissociative relationship for sure. And when I’m most healthy and enjoying my time online and in real life the most is because I understand that I’ve always been in the same place.
Jazmin Jones: I sometimes think of them as fragmented, but I think that of everything. I think I am a fragmented being. You can tell that from the edit. But I like using the digital to connect in the physical. So, it’s about training my algorithm to tell me where the parties are at, the workshops, and the collective organising spaces, and then trying to get offline. Using the internet so it can tell me where I can go to touch grass and then log off.
The UK release date for Seeking Mavis Beacon’s is TBA.