Olsen, Dennis (2026) "Summer is ours too": The liminal beach, totemic advertising and the visual politics of disability. M/C Journal. ISSN 1441-2616 (In Press)

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Abstract

This article develops a structural explanation for a widely discussed failure of institutional diversity communication: the erasure of disability within a campaign designed to celebrate bodily inclusion. Using the Spanish government's “El verano también es nuestro” campaign as a case study, it moves beyond existing accounts that identify the removal of a disabled model's prosthetic leg as a form of ableism. Instead, it asks why disability proved incompatible with the image's visual logic when other forms of bodily difference remained visible.

To answer this question, the article brings together three bodies of scholarship not previously connected in analyses of the campaign: work on the beach as a liminal cultural space, theories of advertising's totemic mode, and critical disability studies. This framework shows how the beach functions as a culturally privileged site for displaying bodies while totemic forms of representation turn individuals into symbols of collective identities. The article argues that these visual expectations create pressure to smooth out forms of difference that cannot easily be absorbed into an uncomplicated image of inclusion.

The analysis offers a new explanation for why a prosthetic limb was removed while a post-mastectomy body was retained within the same image. It also develops the distinction between inclusion as participation and inclusion as extraction to explain how institutions can draw upon the visibility created by activists while excluding those same individuals from the production of representation. The article identifies a broader tension within contemporary diversity communication: visual strategies designed to signal inclusion may reproduce exclusion through the representational logics on which they rely.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Media
Date Deposited:	09 Sep 2026
Dates:	Date Publication status 8 September 2026 Accepted
School, department or research centre:	London School of Film, Media and Design
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/15297
Sustainable Development Goals:	Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities

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