Perhaps This Public Image/Persona Thing Has Gone Just A Little Too Far: Luís Campos Lopes, the manager of the Portuguese football team Vitoria de Setúbal has just been sacked for "projecting a negative image of the club". [Link in Portuguese, but please read on.] The reason? Just watch the photo-sequence in the main link. Luís Lopes had trouble putting on his Setúbal vest during a crucial game with Benfica! I.e. the powerful sports media in Portugal and Brazil have had a riot with the photographs and the poor widdle proprietors were embarrassed. So? He may not be a brilliant manager - but isn't this blatant lookism? Isn't "image" becoming much too big for its boots, as it were, in professional sports? [Here is the only English language reference I could find. Please scroll down to "Luís Campos".]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Mar 31, 2003 - 26 comments

Is It Better To Look Marvellous Than To Sound Marvellous? Like The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop and (controversially) David Bowie, Patti Smith, specially when photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, looked way cooler than she sounded, imho. What other rock legends were more beautiful than the music they made? And, conversely, which artists' music was better than the image they projected?
posted by MiguelCardoso on Dec 30, 2002 - 88 comments