Wonder and Kent discuss the innovative non-fiction film, Seeking Mavis Beacon, about an elusive search for the Black woman behind the eponymous AI assistant who taught millions of people how to type in the 80’s. Emerging themes include the importance of representation and the harm the lack of it causes to marginalized identities, specifically, in this case, to Black, queer, and femme identities, what it looks like to create that representation when it doesn’t exist in the world already, how to create that representation, and the worth of having others who reflect it back to you in your personal life. Astrologically these themes correlate with the 1st House, Mercury, Mercury in its joy in the 1st, and the 11th house of friendship.
NOTES: We don’t explicitly mention it in the recording, but this piece could also lay claim another section in this seasons offering: The Collective: Movements and Friendships. The enduring camaraderie and simpatico between the two main protagonists operates as a driving force as they pursue a path towards self discovery. Also, in the recording, Wonder mentions an interview with Olivia McKayla Ross on how she came up with the name / idea “cyber doula”, which can be found here. Finally, we speak briefly about the film, Milusthando, which we covered in the first season of SATWD, that episode can be found here.
Distribution: Video on Demand, more info
Director: Jazmin Renée Jones
Run Time: 102 minutes
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.456] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of films from Sundance 2024. And we're continuing on our series of looking at all 36 documentaries, and we're starting a new section on Identity. So this is the first of eight on Identity. So the first one in this section is called Seeking Mavis Beacon. And it's a part of the NEXT category, which tends to be a little bit more experimental in its forms. And it's directed by Jazmin Renée Jones, and the cast, and the co-collaborator, and co-investigator of this piece is Olivia McKayla Ross. And it's produced and distributed by NEON, so it does have distribution. So I'm not sure if any date has been announced yet, but keep an eye out for Seeking Mavis Beacon. So, Wonder, if you could read the synopsis for us.
[00:01:04.528] Wonder Bright: Seeking Mavis Beacon: Launched in the late 80s educational software, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, taught millions globally, but the program's Haitian-born cover model vanished decades ago. Two DIY investigators search for the unsung cultural icon while questioning notions of digital security, AI, and Black representation in the digital realm. Jazmin Renée Jones' inventive directorial debut boldly embraces outspoken questioning. Jones turns the camera onto herself and co-investigator, Olivia McKayla Ross, foregrounding their investigatory process and supportive friendship. While unraveling the complex narrative of Mavis Beacon, they uplift the pioneering of Black women in technology and self-reflect on their own methodologies in the process. Jones celebrates diverse ways of embodying knowledge by creatively connecting various sources of information. Observational footage of herself and Ross sit alongside interviews, memes, and insights from activists and artists. The meaning of each clip is made richer by Jones' astute and witty layering, often incorporating the digital interface of a desktop. The dynamic investigation also reveals questions about documentary practice, the incompleteness of archives, and the right to exist on one's own terms. Jones’ vision is vibrant, full of curiosity, and refreshingly open-hearted. And that synopsis comes to us from Sundance programmer Stephanie Owens.
[00:02:34.289] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's a really great synopsis of this piece that I feel like has very much the flavor of a NEXT documentary where it's very experimental, and lots of different structures and forms of how they're telling the story. And the first thing that comes to mind is one of the things that was said during the Q&A, which is that there's the hero's journey and the heroine's journey, and that they're starting to come up with the gender non-conforming journey, which, I feel like this the story is kind of like unorthodox in the way that the story is being told, but it is trying to incorporate these voices of gender nonconforming, gay, transgender folks. But also the overarching film is about race and Black representation within the media, because this typing program that came out had what was one of the first AI assistants that was used as a cover image, but also programmed as somebody who's helping you learn typing. And so there's a lot of this investigation of trying to actually track down this model of Renée L'Espérance, who was the Haitian born model that was used for Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. So yeah, I feel like this film is pulling in lots of different threads of these documentary interviews that they're doing, the true crime investigative modes that we see as a lot of documentaries of, like, investigating, and searching, and uncovering a lot of the truths of what has happened with Renée L'Espérance. So yeah, I mean, I feel like there's so much that's going on in this film and we're starting a new section on Identity as well. And so I'd love to hear some of your first thoughts on this piece.
[00:04:11.488] Wonder Bright: I love that you started with the fact that it was in the NEXT category and how you broke that down because I typically have a sort of like, okay, here we go. Like, I know I'm going to go in, it's going to be experimental, I'm going to probably have to think a little bit harder as I'm engaging with this material and it's not going to be easy. Like, the filmmaker is trying to figure something out while they're showing this to me, and so it's going to push beyond the bounds of what I like think of as storytelling as a medium in a general kind of way. Like, that's the suggestion there. And this film just felt so natural to me. I can understand why it's in the NEXT category and Jones is definitely playing with form in some really playful experimental ways, yet their approach to it is so confident, and so full of curiosity and passion that I couldn't question it. Like, I just was 100% along for the ride. This was one of my favorite films that we saw this year and I will be thinking about it, and in large part, it's because of the way that this quest for this other person's identity, what happened to Mavis Beacon, seeking Mavis Beacon, is really a search for the filmmaker's own identity as a Black queer person who reads as female. Her pronouns are she/they, by the way, so I'm probably going to go back and forth between those two. But In this film, Jones is really asking the questions that they're asking so fervently with such clear desire to know that it drives the project in a way that is, well, it's what Stephanie Owens said in their synopsis, which is, it's refreshingly open hearted. I think that's a really great capture of how this film reads overall. And so it's for me, personally, I find it really hard not to respond open heartedly if someone is open hearted with me. And that's the experience watching this film overall. And I put it into the Identity category because it is an exploration of identity. On the surface of it, it's an exploration of Who Is Mavis Beacon. And the whole reason that they're searching for Mavis Beacon is because Mavis Beacon is also a fictional character that meant a lot to Jazmin Jones growing up, because it was a clear Black femme representation in the world in a way that was competent and accomplished, and, like, a default teacher. And that was a representation that really mattered to Jones when they were a kid. I think they found this when they were eight years old, which is a Venus synodic cycle for any astronerds playing along at home. So there's something around the formation of Jones's discovery of Mavis Beacon that really taps into some deep part of their psyche that sparks this lifelong desire to understand themselves better. And the way that they detail that throughout the making of this film, and the way we get invited along to follow is just really delightful. Like, I learned something that I didn't know I needed to learn. And it made the world bigger for me. And also just the collaboration between Jazmin Jones and her younger counterpart, the collaborator that she works with very closely in the film, who was only 18 years old when she first joined the project, but her wizardry in the tech world made her the obvious candidate. And Jones was aware of her, and she approached her. And so that was how their collaboration was born. But it becomes this enduring friendship watching the two of them together on a mutual hunt for a fresh understanding of who they are in relation to a world that sees people who present the way they do in a certain way.
[00:08:28.271] Kent Bye: Hmm. Yeah. Olivia is Cyberdoula on Instagram, if you want to give her a follow. Such a great username.
[00:08:35.317] Wonder Bright: It is. It's like, it's a phrase that she coined and I'm going to link in our notes to a wonderful interview where she details why she came up with it. But I think the name actually really speaks for itself. Her efforts to, well, you can tell me what you think it means. I love it.
[00:08:53.513] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a way in which the doulas or the midwives are helping to birth new life. The Cyberdoula, she seemed to be a little bit of a technology prodigy working on stuff for a long time. I think one of the key things they do in the film, for me at least, was sprinkle in all these meme videos throughout with these different reactions to kind of give broader cultural commentary on stuff to amplify their points along the way. And they're also doing lots of one-on-one interviews with people to add a lot of context and just talking about Black representation in tech and in media. And lots of folks from transgender, queer, gender non-conforming. But also there's this phrase in the synopsis that jumped out at me ahead of watching it, and that phrase was, “Jones celebrates diverse ways of embodying knowledge”. And I tag that as alternative ways of knowing as a 9th House expression. And throughout the course of this piece, they actually end up going to a lot of divinatory practitioners of either tarot or other people who are giving their intuitions or readings of the omens in a way that, as they're on this journey, they're actually also drawing upon these non-ordinary states of information and divinatory practices, which I felt was quite intriguing as a technique, and as they're going on, and embodying these multiple ways of knowing and embodying different ways of knowledge. And so I feel like just even the way that they're investigating this is also pushing at the forms of how we normally do an investigation, which I thought was also really quite interesting. And you kind of nailed it when you said that at the heart of it, Jazmin and Olivia just want to meet Mavis Beacon, who was this fictional character, but it was embodied by Renée L'Espérance. They want to know her. They want to know all these other aspects of who she is, what her identity is, because she represents this cultural icon that was so inspiring for so many people. They actually set up a hotline for people to call in and to give their own testimonies for how Mavis Beacon impacted them in their own journey of feeling they had representation within the media. So I wanted to read this short little section from Demetra George's Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice, A Manual of Traditional Techniques, Volume 2. So a lot of what we're talking about is identity. And I just wanted to bring in the 1st House signification that Demetra writes about. She says, “the most traditional understanding of the 1st House posits that it is only the 1st House and the ruler of the ascendant that signify the individual. Every other House objectively represents someone or something else in its own right. In modern psychological approaches, the entire chart is the individual, and each house is the person's perception of others that is completely subjective. A middle ground could be proposed in which the 1st House represents the individual, and each of the other houses depict how others objectively impact the person. However, all agree that the 1st House represents the native, the individual with their body, character, mind, personality, and identity”. And I wanted to read that just to give a bit of historical context for how the 1st House is always around identity, but we can look at the complex of all these other contexts in these domains of the human experience. And when we think about what our identity is when we're around our friends, or family, or at work, or when we're at church, you know, these are all different domains of human experience that are expressed in astrology through the different houses. And so there is a fractal expression of how we express ourselves across all these different contextual domains. And I think the search for who someone is and what their identity is, is about understanding how this person expresses themselves across these different domains, just to kind of understand who someone is. You kind of ask people about, what do you do for work? What do you like to do for hobbies? And you're just trying to unpack and unpick all these dimensions of who this person is and how they express themselves. And so as we start this broader section on Identity, where each of the different films are going to be reflecting that, I think this film is a great example, because they're really exploring the expression of identity and identity representation within the context of the media so that we don't just have these stereotyped ideas about what other people are, who might be of a different race, gender, class, or whatever, but the more that we have an opportunity to see other people with these diverse representations, we can start to understand the complexity of identity as it goes across different people. I feel like this, as a film, is a real unpacking of a lot of those different dynamics of identity and media representation.
[00:13:28.516] Wonder Bright: I really love that you read that breakdown, because something that comes up for me around it is that distinction between how the 1st House was viewed traditionally, the 1st House is self and all the other houses relate to your environment, or other people in your environment, versus the more modern meaning where the whole chart is oneself. It really, kind of like, pricks at something that this film itself is actually seeking to investigate and interrogate a bit more deeply, which is why I put it as the very first one in this series. We have several biopics that will come later, but the first two films for this series on identity are actually looking at questions of identity altogether. So this idea that the entire chart could be oneself and that we're sort of independent, that we're more independent from the environment in some way, really reflects a kind of modern preoccupation with free will, which frankly is a very privileged way of looking at one's chart. Because I think that the traditional astrology actually offers a greater context for how your environment might actually be much more out of your control. And of course, that is really interesting if you're thinking about trying to come at these questions of identity and your life's path, if you are living at the intersection of multiple different cultural strains, right. So some of the more interesting astrologers practicing traditional techniques, to my mind, are Black and queer astrologers, because they're looking at it from this larger perspective, right, where it's no longer just about free will in a way that really encompasses, like, what are the cultural norms that are surrounding this person? You know, as an astrologer, you can't just look at a chart and think that that chart is going to operate the same way if it's a human baby born inside the hospital versus a frog outside the hospital. Well, the same thing is true, whether it’s, like, a rich person, a poor person, a black person, a white person, a queer person, et cetera, et cetera. Like you could just go on endlessly. We're all going to fulfill the brief in a different way. And so there's this power in being able to deconstruct the cultural narrative that surrounds you to get to that personal narrative that can then be the driver of your life in a way that has a much richer meaning when you can identify the forces that you may be at the mercy of. Because if you can identify them, you know, this is, like, somebody who's trying to diagnose a disease in many cases because our culture is diseased in the way that we think of anything that's not white, cis, etc. as being other, and not good. So if you can identify the ways in which the culture is diseased, then you don't have to take on that disease for yourself. And that actually strengthens your 1st House sense of identity. And that's the adventure that we get to watch Jazmin and Olivia go on in this film. And I really want to mention that Jazmin Jones chooses, in part, to frame, like, one of the many ways that she so expertly frames the film through the use of memes or repeated themes, is that she starts the film very early on with a quote from the filmmaker, Cheryl Dunye, which is that “sometimes you have to create your own history”. And Cheryl Dunye is a Black lesbian filmmaker who created this film Watermelon (Woman) that came out in 1996. And Watermelon (Woman) is a film in which Cheryl Dunye more or less plays a version of herself. And she - it's a kind of pseudo documentary where she wants to go and research this icon of the silver screen who was a Black woman but was known as the Watermelon Woman. And this is a fictional character because Dunye couldn't get the rights to use some of the actual Black actresses at the time because it was completely out of her shoestring budget. So she created this character so that she could explore these ideas. And then in the film, she actually plays that character. And, you know, I mean, I think I saw it within a year or two of it coming out in theaters. And I had never seen a film that interrogated blackness and black representation in that way. And I remember it - oh, my gosh, Kent, I'm just having this, having a moment around this - I remember my abiding experience when I was watching the film was how white I felt. Do you remember when we watched Milisuthando last year? And Milisuthando asks her white friend, “when did you realize you were white?”
[00:18:36.271] Kent Bye: Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
[00:18:37.552] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I think that might have been my moment, actually, was watching Watermelon (Woman). I think that might have been the moment that I realized I was white, you know, it was the first time I was really given an opportunity to witness someone trying to understand her unique Black experience in a culture that denied her realities. And, like, it was the first time that I didn't understand it in a really fundamental way. So it’s, like, that film has stayed with me. And so when Jazmin Jones uses Dunye's very evocative statement, “sometimes you have to create your own history to frame the work”, that was a real clue to me what a significant journey I was about to go on in the film. And, you know, I have a lot more capacity, I guess is the right word for it, to like be able to follow along at this point and not make it all about me. Thank you, Cheryl Dunye, and everyone who's come since that I've been lucky enough to learn from. But this film is, like, you know the next generation on. And it's coming from the pure unique, high-spirited, open-hearted place that Jazmin Jones occupies themselves. There's another sequence later in the film where Jones and Ross are talking over the phone, but the camera is focused on Jones and they're at their desk in their office. And in the background, there's a scene from Watermelon Woman that's playing in the background where Dunye is sitting on the steps of her house or her friend's house talking with her friend. And so there's just this, like, the film is like a really, really rich text if you know what you're looking at. And I know that there were things I didn't know that I was looking at. But that little piece of the puzzle added so much. And it's one of the real geniuses of what Jones has done here, that she's been able to layer in all these multifaceted things that are not just nods or homages, but clues along the path, breadcrumbs for her to follow, and for all of us to follow as we go with her.
[00:21:04.134] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. And it is quite an investigatory journey that I'm hesitant to talk too much about because I feel like the film has this inherent tension that is a part of the journey. But there is one point I wanted to bring up, just how digging into the truth of this representation, and how there's a bit of appropriation, and colonial seizure of, or just kind of a cultural appropriation, let's say, where the owners of this were white men programmers. And really the use of Renée L'Esperance as the face of Mavis Beacon was a bit of, like, there's a lot of, in the film that's investigating what kind of right relationships, or not right relationships, were between the white male programmers that were making Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and whatever happened with Renée L'Espérance. And so there's a lot of these other power dynamics. So I think there’s, like, a deconstructing of power dynamics that could fit into this film as well. But I do think the center of gravity comes back to this expression of identity. There's both a 3rd House of the mechanics of a lot of the communication technologies, but also like a lot of 5th House in terms of the stories and media that is propagated throughout our culture. And so how identity plays into both the stories that we're watching, but also how those stories are being distributed through these communication technologies. And so I feel like this film is unpacking a lot of those dimensions and really the way even that it's made is creating new forms of how to explore some of these different questions. So yeah, I felt like by the end of it, I was really centering back onto this kind of 1st House expression of identity. That's really, for me, the center of gravity of the significations of this piece.
[00:22:45.527] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think that it's not only the center of gravity for our protagonists, but the real gift in what Jones was able to create is a mirror to hold back to our culture, wherever you find yourself at in that, you know. I think there's a danger, as this film illustrates, of watching Black filmmakers and Black creators, whether it's music, film, books, whatever it is, of sort of co-opting their journey and making it our own. And at the same time, when you have someone who's investigating so purely who they are in relation to the culture, and also who they are in a way that the culture can't touch, that's actually a valuable mirror for all of us to have, which is why I really loved it when Milisuthando asked that question, “when did you know that you were white?" So if I'm watching Jazmin Jones film and I'm having this experience of being able to watch her deconstruct why these white men chose a Black woman as their representation, and I'm watching her reconcile the contradiction and paradox within that for her, that whatever their bias in creating it, it did have this really profound and fantastic effect on her. And I'm watching her reconcile that tension and paradox. And there's an opportunity in that for me as well, for any of us, looking at a film that investigates identity, to also look at our own cultural reflections because of the way that our body, or gender, or sex, or race presents to the dominant culture. There's an opportunity for us to reflect on whether or not that matches our internal reality, and to interrogate that. Like, I actually think that that is the collective job before all of us right now. And I feel really grateful for artists like Jazmin Jones, and Cheryl Dunye before them, really going out there and creating new ground for us to follow them and hopefully come back with our own jewels, and our own abilities so that we can actually perceive one another in a more holistic way.
[00:25:25.980] Kent Bye: Yeah. And we've been talking a lot about the 1st House significations and identity. And I think another part of that is Mercury and the material nature of investigation curiosity, but also Mercury has its joy in the 1st House. But a lot of this film has a lot of material nature of the way that it's investigating, it's curious, it's deconstructing all these aspects. And so I want to read this little passage from Demetra George because I think it combines both the 1st House and Mercury. She says, "the 1st House denotes life, body, speech, the beginning of all actions, as well as the thoughts on one's mind. The presence of joyful Mercury in the 1st House indicates a person whose power of speech and oratory skills carry the influence of their ideas.” So I definitely feel like there's a lot of this film that is carrying forth that mercurial nature and 1st House nature and kind of the intersection between those two. But as we think about this film as a remedial measure, then who would you prescribe Seeking Mavis Beacon to?
[00:26:23.283] Wonder Bright: I would prescribe Seeking Mavis Beacon to anybody who has a strong desire to understand who they are for themselves both interdependently, independently and unfortunately sometimes codependently with the world that they inhabit. This is a film for people who need to forge their own 1st House identity in a way that may not please the mainstream culture within which they find themselves. This is a film for people who maybe have complicated relationships with their 1st House. If you have a chart that has a difficult chart combination relative to your 1st House, this is for you. I would prescribe this film for anyone who is earnestly engaged in the effort of self-definition and of understanding who they are in relation to the world around them. Honestly, I would prescribe this film for absolutely every single person if I could. I feel like that's actually one of the most important things that we can do as human beings on this planet in this time right now, to really, truly understand who we are in relation and in context with everyone else. And this film shines a light on a very specific, you know, we've talked before about how when you look at a small story, like one tiny individual story will show you the larger patterns. This film is actually doing something miraculous because they're trying to look at the larger patterns, yet they can't help but illustrate this small pattern. And so it really beautifully moves between those two modes in a way that is incredibly holistic, and moving and a really full journey in both regards. So, yeah, I really wish that I lived in a world where everybody could watch this and love it the way that I do.
[00:28:33.615] Kent Bye: Yeah, and as I think about this film and what I want to bear witness to, I really want to bear witness to the collaboration between Jazmin and Olivia because I feel like their journey was to go on this investigation and to weave in all these larger interviews and context and memes to tell this larger story of Black representation in the media. but also their own personal journeys as they go through this. You end up seeing an arc in each of them as they go on this journey. And at the end, it is, like you said, a reflection of themselves and what they're learning about their own identities as they go through this process. So yeah, I just want to honor their collaboration because I feel like it's a bit unique when we watch this year's crop of films where we see so much of the collaborative process unfolding in front of us. And so there's a bit of a revealing of the process relational nature of how this film even got made by both Jazmin and Olivia turning the cameras on themselves and to include so much of their own individual journeys and journeys together as they're going on this broader 9th House journey of long distance travel, and investigation into these questions of who is Mavis Beacon, and where is Mavis Beacon, and What is Renéee Lisperance up to, and who is she as a person?
[00:29:50.404] Wonder Bright: I, too, want to bear witness to Jazmin and Olivia together and their collaboration and also the way that their collaboration is really coming, it seems clear to be coming from a real, genuine, authentic friendship. They may only really have become friends as a result of this collaboration, but they seem destined to have become friends because the way that they hold their own individual vision, and hold the other’s inside of that, it actually ends up, for me, being part of the thing that allows them to find what they were looking for that they may not have even known what that was when they started out. And there's so much of the film that happens in the way that they're connecting with one another. And I just really cherish it. It's a pretty wonderful thing to see, like, every single time they're on the screen together and the way that they dress and the way that they create themselves in the world, and how they embody themselves is just, that's a remedial measure in itself, honestly. They're just really good medicine. And I look forward to following each of their careers and honestly really hope they do more work together as well.
[00:31:10.790] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, that's all that we have for today. And I just want to thank you for listening to the Story All the Way Down podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do, spread the word, and tell your friends, and consider signing up on the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
