Small Words

Another installment of Analyze the Meme!  

Happy Thanksgiving! This Thanksgiving I’m giving thanks for silly online jokes. Let’s add a dash of semantics and a bit of analysis to explain why this one is so funny!

A lot of comics use confusion to get us to laugh. In this comic created by Dan Reynolds, the confusion hinges on how we find meaning in lists. Lists are a set of items that share some essential quality. The act of listing necessitates that each member has something in common. A shopping list, for instance, is a collection of ‘things to buy’. When ‘children under 5’ appears at the bottom of the restaurant sign – just under turkey, ham, and corned beef – we are misled to believe kids are on the menu or belong to the list of ‘things to eat’. Oh dear!

If we, as discerning readers, are not fooled by the appearance of list membership, the turkeys are here to clue us in on the second reading.

The turkeys are shocked that restaurant-goers would eat their children. They both double down on the joke (for those in the back) and tempt us to see the humanity in turkeys before our big feast – an artful call back to a longstanding T-Day uncle joke. Ruin everyone’s meal before the meal (likely followed by a belly laugh).

5 out 5 stars from me