“Street Man Fighter” ranks #1 in the recent popularity chart but still receives criticism for its excessively provocative directing

Mnet’s survival show “Street Man Fighter”, which depicts the battles of pride between male dancers, is currently a hot topic.

Mnet’s “Street Man Fighter” ranked 1st place in the list of content impact evaluation indexes (CPI – consumer price index) in the second week of September (from the 5th to the 11th) released by CJ ENM on September 22nd. It recorded a CPI index of 396.8, which is much higher than that of the No.2 show “Little Women” (292.4).

Known as the male version of “Street Woman Fighter”, which created a craze for dancing in Korea last year, “Street Man Fighter” raised high expectations even before its official broadcast.

Starting with a viewer rating of 1.3% in the first episode, which is higher than that of “Street Woman Fighter” first episode (0.8%), “Street Man Fighter” is gaining huge popularity on SNS with the dancers’ performance videos and challenges of the choreographies created by the cast that many people are doing. 

In particular, the choreography for Zico’s song “New Thing”, which was created by We Dem Boyz leader Vata, is receiving enthusiastic responses from the public. Even BTS V was seen dancing to the song and famous idols, including NCT Jisung, ITZY Yeji – Ryujin, etc., recently joined the dance challenge of this song. In addition, “New Thing” choreography video on Youtube has also recorded 43,000 views. 

Gaining a lot of attention on the Internet and social media sites thanks to the unique choreographies and the dancers’ amazing stages, the viewers’ responses and ratings of “Street Man Fighter”, on the other hand, are seeing relatively disappointing performances.

“Street Woman Fighter’ started with a low rating in the range of 0% then rose steadily in every episode and recorded 2.6% after four episodes. Meanwhile, “Street Man Fighter” is still staying in the 1% range. Its highest viewer rating record is currently 1.9% (episode 4). 

Some viewers point out that “Street Man Fighter” is more provocative than necessary. New elements, such as messing up the opponent crew’s waiting room before the battle or making the losing team be backup dancers for the winning team, have been added. Slangs and swear words of the cast members also appear more frequently with “beep” sounds. 

At the press conference for the program held before the first broadcast, the sexist remarks of Chief Producer (CP) Kwon Young-chan received harsh criticism from the public.

CP Kwon said, “If the survival of female dancers were about jealousy and greed, male dancers join the battle for loyalty and pride”. At that time, netizens criticized his remark as a “sexist opinion that goes against the times” and some even claimed that they would boycott “Street Man Fighter”.

Source: Daum