Jazmine Jones knows what she’s done. “On the internet, there’s this concept of trolling,” says Jones, the film’s director. Searching for Mavis Beacon“We take some things very seriously in this project, but we joke about other things. We joke about the idea of ​​detectives because we’re like ACAB,” he said at a recent panel about the new documentary.
But there was a good reason for her trolling: Jones and fellow filmmaker Olivia McKayla Ross were trying to find the woman behind Mavis Beacon Teaching Typing.
The popular educational tool was released in 1987 by Software Toolworks, a California-based video game and software company that created educational games for chess, reading and math. Mavis, the game’s “mascot,” is a Black woman dressed in business attire with slicked back hair. While Mavis Beacon is not a real person, Jones and Ross say she was one of the first examples of Black representation they saw in the tech industry. Searching for Mavis Beaconwhich opens in New York City on August 30th and will roll out to other cities in September, is an attempt to reveal the stories behind the faces that appeared on the tools’ packaging and later became part of their interfaces.
The film finds the pair setting up a detective suite, FaceTimeing, calling on people on the street, and tracking down relatives connected to the elusive Mavis, but their quest raises other, less anticipated questions: what effects do sexism, racism, privacy, and exploitation have in a world where we can express ourselves however we want?
This noir-inspired documentary, featuring computer screen shots, extensive archival footage and interviews, reveals that Mavis Beacon was in fact Rene L’Esperance, a black model from Haiti. I paid $500 for her portrait. Despite the program, no royalties are paid. Sell ​​millions of copies.
The artificial creation of caricatures of people from marginalized groups is not unique to Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Big brands have used these caricatures to generate both publicity and revenue without informing the real people behind the inspiration of their success.
“Lil Miquela“, an AI-generated music artist with approximately 2.5 million Instagram followers, BMW CommercialMSI recently partnered with synthetic influencers to promote their OLED monitors. Listed on the web page Lil Miquela promotes the collaboration by saying she has “rich roots as a half Brazilian, half Spanish” AI bot. Reportedly They earn millions of dollars a year as influencers. Meanwhile, BIPOC social media influencers report making up to 67% less per Instagram post than their white counterparts, according to a study published by a PR firm last year. MSL Group.
Another example is Shudhu Gramis known as “the world’s first digital supermodel,” according to her Instagram account. Shudu, who debuted in 2017, is tall, slender, and very dark-skinned. She looks more human than Lil Miquela, but she’s not. At a time when black models still face difficulties in the fashion industry, Gram has been featured in Vogue Czechoslovakia, In partnership with Sony Pictures, On Instagram, she has 239,000 followers.
