To find if this documentary is playing at a theatre near you, please visit the official website.
When the people Seeking Mavis Beacon think of the software designed to teach typing as a videogame, I’m sure this telling documentary can ask Where in the World is Mavis Becon instead of Carmen Sandiego. At least, when comparing Broderbund/The Learning Company’s product to The Software Toolworks‘ deception, the lines of reality is not as blurry. Back when both games were released, everyone thought these characters were real!
However, for a generation who grew up learning how to touch type and improving their typing speed with this “person,” she’s an iconic role model many people will not dispute. Until the information was made public, not everyone knew she was a made up figure. A real person was involved in selling the product, but that was only for a day. Renee L’esperance was already a well established fashion model who was mostly better known in Haiti than other parts of the world. And when Les Crane, Walt Bilofsky, and Mike Duffy knew she was the one to become the face of their learning app, their plan can be scorned now instead of back then.
They only offered her $500 to pose for a simple photo shoot, and never offered her a contract for residuals. Had she known just how influential this program would become, she’d be as rich as Bill Gates! The last software release occurred in 2020, a detail this film journal did not take a deep dive into.
What this work focuses on is the search for this person and why corporate America is what it is. Also included is a fitting examination of a black woman’s role in a world still perceived as “Colonial/White.” Whether that’s continuing in certain parts of Corporate United States of America, that’s more subject for scholars to debate than Jazmin Renée Jones (who also wrote and directed) and Olivia McKayla Ross. Both are huge fans of this software. They put L’esperance on the same pedestal as Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek fame.
They detail their struggles as their office gets raided, invaded, and reclaimed because they were driving cross-country to places where this reclusive woman once lived. Their hope to find someone who knows what she’s done lately, or perhaps where she has moved to.
This woman doesn’t want online recognition. I don’t blame her for doing so. Her spokesperson went on record to say she wishes to be left alone. Hopefully in the future, she will change her mind. Maybe she’ll write a tell-all (from her point of view) before she passes away. I’d love to know why she didn’t pursue further legal rights to copyright her face. Also, since she’s a model, I’m curious if there are surviving publications that featured her. Even without a look at her past, this documentary doesn’t feel diminished. These two detectives give this work all the fun character it needs to stay engrossed each minute it plays out.
But for those who learned to type with this program, I have to report not everyone developed this skill that way. I learned through sheer brute force on my Commodore 64 because I wanted to type in all that code listed in magazines which were simple games. That changed to writing fiction, and when my high school business education teacher, Mrs. Neufeld, saw fast I was, she said I should take proper typing lessons. She became my Yoda, and I transformed into Luke, needing to unlearn a lot of bad habits. A computer keyboard is not the same as a proper typewriter; a carriage return on the former is the return key that you hit twice, and the delete/backspace never existed until the digital age! Anyone who has done data entry as job will tell you that until those documents passes the third input, it’s not considered error free.
The reason not every aspect is looked at is that the the story is all about finding that person and ask, “Are you happy with your decision to walk away from fame?” The response they get is respectable, and as for whether this software changed the way computers got used in the clerical workspace, I suppose missing a few words is okay.
4 Words found out of 5
Seeking Mavis Beacon Trailer
Discover more from Otaku no Culture
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
