About the "Spirit Tunnel"
And the fleeting nature of virality.
In Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’s musical Gypsy, there’s a famous show-stopper “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” in which three showbiz vets school the newbie on the art of making it. Their conclusion: “You gotta have a gimmick. If you wanna get ahead.” In other words, nothing matters if you can’t garner the attention necessary to really matter. The Spirit Tunnel, the marquee offering over at the self-appointed “happy place,” aka The Jennifer Hudson Show, is very much that, a gimmick in line with an ecosystem of media offerings that asks celebrities to do tricks: eat hot wings or go on a date in a chicken shop or play with puppies, etc. But in the case of The Jennifer Hudson Show, now in its third season, its host is conspicuously absent from the very thing that’s made her show a viral hit.
Late last month, Variety chief correspondent Dan D’Addario tweeted about this, writing:
“It feels like poor planning that the defining element of the Jennifer Hudson talk show does not involve Jennifer Hudson in any capacity.”
Ironic, perhaps then, that the Spirit Tunnel was born out of the crew wanting to hype up the host during the show’s second season (yes, it’s that new).
The first celebrity iteration debuted in the Season 3 premiere last September when Angela Bassett took to the tunnel in shock-turned-to-delight at her reception from the crew.
Since then, it’s gone repeatedly viral thanks to celebs like Michelle Obama, Aaron Pierre and Keke Palmer easing down the tunnel with a mixture of excitement and flair.
But then, of course, came the backlash.