Rating: NR | Runtime: 102 minutes
Release Date: August 30th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Neon
Director(s): Jazmin Jones
Writer(s): Jazmin Jones

That’s the difference between a detective movie and a stalker movie.

I do like a documentary that doesn’t quite deliver on its promise. When the filmmakers set out to provide answers to a question only to discover more questions and different answers along the way. There’s an energy to these projects that simply cannot exist in one with a very clear motive, direction, and execution. The filmmakers themselves become subjects in relation to their quest rather than the quest steering purpose in relation to them. What does the journey that is Seeking Mavis Beacon give Jazmin Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross?

Because it’s so much more than a love letter to an icon—either the game (Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing) itself or the woman whose likeness was used to represent the titular character (Renée L’Espérance). It’s about identity. Race. Appropriation. Technology. Artificial Intelligence. Legacy. Privacy. These two women have the best intentions of letting Renée speak on the record and clear the air considering everything we know about her involvement comes from the varying tales of the white people who “found” her, paid her, and ultimately betrayed her. But maybe there’s a reason that’s true. Maybe Renée would rather stay erased.

It’s that revelation that really drives the film because it forces Jones and Ross to reconsider the reasons why the world doesn’t know the whole truth. Some of it does stem from the software developers wanting control of the narrative, but the rest comes from Renée’s very carefully managed online footprint to let them. The filmmakers must then reconcile the fact that what they see as congratulatory might conversely be harmful to the object of that applause. Should they keep pushing? Have they already gone too far? Should they be lauding The Software Toolworks instead? Vilifying them?

That complexity is what drives this detective story away from the search for Renée and towards an introspective look at the changing landscape of representation, deep fakes, and truth. Renée wasn’t Mavis Beacon, but it was her image that inspired so many Black women in the film to pursue careers in technological fields. She therefore becomes “real” through the conflation and the results. And because of that, Jones and Ross feel a sense of entitlement in letting this woman who has meticulously ensured there’s been no record of her existence in twenty-five years know it. So, the camera must turn towards those influenced by her. It must pivot to the “why” of making Mavis Beacon Black and the societal effect.

The film does a wonderful job of this. Shifting focus and introducing voices to dig into the psychology behind the choice and its impact. It also speaks to our ability as humans to make the unreal real through shared experience and memory. How we take a fictitious persona like Mavis Beacon and give her life regardless of intent. There’s a level of ownership in that. The users giving credence to a construct rather than the programmers themselves. An avatar becoming whole. An idea manifesting into physical form. Yes, Mavis was created from a place of racial and gendered stereotype, but that doesn’t lessen her place as a role model and hero.

And you can’t begrudge Renée for avoiding that duality altogether. If anything, her absence allows for Mavis Beacon to live on in people’s consciousness as that hero. Maybe she just doesn’t want to burst that bubble. Doesn’t want to allow the Mavis from the 1990s to be replaced by the Renée of today. Because once you give the internet and pop culture an inroad to alter and corrupt a fixed thing, there’s no going back. Is Renée’s truth therefore worth shattering the illusory truth countless people who were helped by Mavis already share? It’s a question we can assume Renée has considered. Perhaps the knowledge that people still care is enough.

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Olivia McKayla Ross and Jazmin Jones in SEEKING MAVIS BEACON; courtesy of Neon.