Mnet continues to use the method of creating “love and war” narratives with “Street Man Fighter” to attract viewers
“Guys Ready? Fight!” is what MC Kang Daniel says the most on Mnet’s “Street Man Fighter”. As such, “Street Man Fighter” has constantly encouraged the cast to fight. However, the dancers in this program have complex emotions that cannot be concluded simply by the word “enmity”. Although the dancers are often seen looking at each other with sharp eyes and doing war of nerves on the stage, they sometimes share common passions and show bickering bromance moments.
“Street Man Fighter” is a kind of dramatic narrative that is written as “battle” but read as “love and war”. Among the numerous cast members consisting of prominent dancers, only one crew can become the winner. That process can be praised as professional or criticized as cheating depending on the survival method of the winning crew. The program provides a battleground for all the teams and individuals and creates a more diverse version of a drama. That’s why “Street Man Fighter” skipped the lengthy introduction of crews and showed the appearance of the judges BoA, Eunhyuk and Wooyoung first in the one-on-one battle on the round stage. This is the prelude to war.
The cast will join 1:1 battles under the name of themselves and the crew in the first shoot, the process of Mnet creating the characters is similar to that of any previous survival show they have done. Although it is important to find out the winner among the cast through battles, it is not exaggerated to say that the ultimate goal of the program is to capture the characteristics of the dancers that can attract fans. Just like what Mnet did in “Street Women Fighter”, they gave almost similar characteristics to the cast members and created stories for each person. Among them, the ones who gained more explosive responses will win the chance to promote themselves by securing more screen time in the next episodes. This result in the situation in which someone tries to become a villain to get this opportunity.
Half of the success of “Street Woman Fighter”, the female version of “Street Man Fighter” participated by Noze, Lip J, Gabee, etc., could be considered the power of such characters Mnet created, so male dancers, who learned about it, do not hesitate to make outspoken remarks to make their appearance stand out for good. This process eventually creates a dramatic play with more fun.
The production team installs devices everywhere to encourage these fights. Since the cast members have been backup dancers for singers all their life, the production team made the performers who said they “hate it more than dying” feel ashamed making them backup dancers for dancers. In this process, most participants raised their voices strongly to avoid such humiliation. Baek Gu-young, leader of 1MILLION who eventually became a member of the backup crew, shed tears during an interview as he said, “I’ve been dancing in the back for 20 years of my career. I tried ‘Street Man Fighter’ but there’s still no video of me dancing”, producing new narrative on a different level.
In-gyu, the leader of the We Dem Boyz, became a public enemy by dissing almost all teams. The leader of Prime Kingz, Trix, Korea’s most powerful Krump dander, cried like a child when his crew was eliminated. All the cast members sympathized with Trix’s tears, and hugged him. The turbulent narrative of love and war is what adds to the fun of watching “Street Man Fighter”. At the same time, as the judges said, the fact that you can see high-quality dance performances by professionals that you usually have to pay money to watch is also what’s fun about the show.
After the first elimination battle, the production team of “Street Man Fighter” received many criticisms, but at the same time, the show’s popularity has also risen. The important point of the remaining journey is more interesting drama to be created. Judging from the pre-released Mega Crew mission video of each crew, the possibility of more drama to be stimulated seems very high.
Source: dispatch
