Humor Analysis

I find Jim Gaffigan to be quite funny, and by looking at his techniques we can discover why he is funny.

Gaffigan takes real world issues and applies them to whales as a base for his humor.  He begins by criticizing them for being fat.  This is the base for the rest of his jokes.  His depressed whale noise leads him to debate why whales might be sad.  He lists very shallow reasons for their sadness like being bad at hide and seek.  This springboards into his bit about whales' body image.  Like humans on diets the whale claims that he only eats plankton but  the little fish interject otherwise.  Many people can relate to the diet analogy.  They have felt of seen the difficulties of trying to stick with a diet.  Whether the audience realizes it or not, Gaffigan is taking a real issue and applying it in a satiric way.

"Don't bring up whales around my dad"  He compares whales to controversial issues.  It might not be wise to bring up the economy or Iran around "my dad" but whales, probably okay.  We all know people like this, that will go off at any mention of a certain issue.  In a way Gaffigan is getting us to laugh at ourselves or our family.

Finally he parallels the anatomy of whales and humans.  No matter the context people will always find poop jokes funny.  A serious health problem that grows with age is made hysterical by a reference to a whale who recently visited the Indian Ocean

In a different contexts Gaffigan gets us to laugh at ourselves and the world around us.  We know that body image isn't a funny topic, but can't stop laughing at a fat whale in denial portrayed with a funny voice.