Tarring and feathering in popular culture

Tarring and feathering is a physical punishment, used to enforce unofficial justice or exact revenge. It was used in feudal Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, as well as the early American frontier, mostly as a type of mob vengeance. It has been commonly referenced in historic and contemporary popular culture, particularly in the United States.

A fictional depiction of this practice in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Literature

The use of tar and pitch in punishments appearing in such medieval works as Anglo-Norman sermons, The Purgatory of Saint Patrick by Marie de France and Dante's Inferno have been seen as precursors for the idea of tarring and feathering. The latter also features the element of feathers when a "human thief is painfully transformed into a grotesque simulacrum of nature's thief, the magpie".

North America

The punitive social ritual of tarring and feathering has appeared in numerous American works of both "canonical literature and dime novels", even as the actual practice became less frequent, "dramatizing debates between summary punishment on the one hand, and individual rights on the other". This outward blackening by tar was generally equated with blackness of character, which again was linked to racist notions of the inferiority of black-skinned slaves, while the feathers were sometines regarded as "nodding to [American-]Indian headdresses". "John Trumbull, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe, among numerous others, draw on tarring and feathering to portray anxieties about the "experiment" of democracy in which egalitarian alignment of society yielded a racialized social opprobrium." The earliest representations in literature were in the context of the American revolution, in a poem by Philip Freneau and in John Trumbull's M'Fingal from 1776, which in its literary form of "the mockepic genre [...] resonated with the euphemistic, tongue-in-cheek language used in newspapers". This background reappeared in Jimmy Carter's 2003 novel The Hornet's Nest, which features a "stunning" scene with the tarring and feathering of loyalist Thomas Brown. The torture was presented as the pivotal event for the radicalization of that character.

James Fenimore Cooper's Redskins from 1846 presented the act of tarring and feathering in the context of the Anti-Rent War as the "unwarranted, imbalanced threat of violence from misguided, irrational, and selfinterested crowds". In the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, tarring and feathering appeared as problematic side-effect of democracy and nationalism in the United States of America of his time, progressing from a symbolic regicide in the American revolution to fratricde. In "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1831), Robin, the nephew of the eponymous character, seeks him in vain throughout the story. Finally, Robin sees the Major taken by in a procession, tarred and feathered, having fallen out of the favour of his community. Here Hawthorne examined the effect this punishment has on the "community after engaging in such a brutal act", while he used it as "as a metaphor of persecution and victimization" in "Old News: The Old Tory" (1837) and "The Custom-House", the introduction to The Scarlet Letter (1850). In Doctor Grimshawe's Secret (1882) Hawthorne puts both perspectives together "as characters alternate between victims and perpetrators with each passing moment". In the stories "The Liberty Tree" and "Tory's Farewell" from the collection Grandfather's Chair (1842), Hawthorne shows tarring and feathering as a sign of "mob mentality that dismisses common sense" and is unwarranted as a means of political and social dispute.

"Dramatizations of the ritual in antebellum literature reveal the deep political and psychological anxieties about the use of violent social coercion to establish the always shifting class and racial boundaries of U.S. nationalism." Edgar Allan Poe's humorous short story, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" (1845), featured the staff of an insane asylum being tarred and feathered as a means of torture. In his short story "Hop-Frog; Or Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs" (1849) appeared the "image of the tarred and feathered body as ape", which "for Poe, is the embodiment of white terror associated with the chaos of rioting and insurrection." Both stories are written against the background of the abolitionism debate, and the tarring and feathering is also seen as the outward sign of a "power inversion", which can be related for Poe's society both to the relationship of slave and master, as well as abolitionists and anti-abolitionists. Psychiatric history researcher Wendy Gonaver assumed that "Tarr and Fether" "mocks the conceit that bourgeois liberalism can contain the violent madness of revolution". The story was very loosely adapted by The Alan Parsons Project into the song "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" on the Tales of Mystery and Imagination album. A more racialized context, where tar is used to blacken the skin against abolitionists and sympathizers "to correspond to the purported color of the slaves they were trying to free" is prevalent in the atmosphere preceding the American Civil War. This was reflected in literary works like Harriet Beecher-Stowe's novel Dred from 1856 and Rose Mather (1868) by Mary Jane Holmes.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) by Mark Twain "perhaps more than any other literary work, immortalized the punishment": the King and the Duke are tarred, feathered, and ridden on a rail after performing the Royal Nonesuch to a crowd that Jim had warned about the rapscallions. Twain points out the dehumanizing effect of the ritual and "that even those who deserve blame do not warrant punishment outside the law". In 1958 the social punishment appears as a humorous element in James Thurber's modern fable "What Happened To Charles": the duck Eva, who eavesdrops on every conversation she hears but never gets anything quite right, is ironically tarred and un-feathered, i.e. plucked, after she mistakes "shod" (having shoes put on) for "shot" and spreads the rumor that the horse Charles has been killed (he turns up alive and wearing new horseshoes). In Philip Roth's 2004 alternate history novel The Plot Against America, the 8-year-old protagonist has a daydreaming fear of himself and his family being tarred and feathered. Here this "antiquated punishment from Western mythology" symbolizes the humiliation the Jewish family suffers in a climate of antisemitism. In Anne Cameron's The Journey (1982) it is an example of mysogyny in the American West.

Scholar of American literature Marina Trininc observed in 2013 that tarring and feathering has also appeared in recent American novels against the background of terroristic attacks in the US and worldwide.

Europe

Tarring and feathering in America has been reported and discussed in many British newspapers in the 1770s, often in an exaggerating manner, emphasizing different sensibilites between the two populations and denigrating American attitude, while a majority of American newspapers presented such acts in a sympathetic and euphemistic way. Charles Dickens satirized this tone of the latter in Martin Chuzzlewit (1842-1844) in the figure of Mr. Chollop: This American was an "advocate of Lynch law, and slavery; and invariably recommended, both in print and speech, the "tarring and feathering" of any unpopular person who differed from himself" and "was much esteemed for his devotion to rational Liberty".

In Northern Irish literature, "[t]arring and feathering women who are accused of dating males of the other community (especially British soldiers) are a common topos". A graphic depiction of the practice occurs in Robert McLiam Wilson's 1989 novel Ripley Bogle, where in West Belfast a woman made pregnant by a corporal of the Royal Engineers is punished. Seamus Heaney's 1975 poem "Punishment" juxtaposes the tarring and feathering of Catholic women who fraternized with British soldiers with the punishment of Iron Age bog body the Windeby Girl (since revealed to be a man) who was at the time thought to have been punished for infidelity, suggesting that the punishment meted to women in Northern Ireland is very much rooted in ancient tribal traditions. This connection has been critized by scholar of English literature Richard Danson Brown as "sloppy thinking" which removes the modern punitive ritual from the political realm. In Eoin McNamee's novel Resurrection Man (1994), both sides of the Northern Ireland conflict are shown employing these "ritual punishments for consorting with the enemy", emphasizing the Troubles "as a period of the destabilization of ethical norms".

In fairy tales tarring and feathering is only rarely found, but it appears in a number of droll stories - most prevalent in Northern and Eastern Europe - as a late addition after the middle of the 19th century. The character types of klutz at housework, dumb woman, and unwanted male suitor - all caricatures of human weaknesses - are ridiculed by tarring and feathering. Sometimes the function of tar and feathers is replaced by other substances like eggs and bran, or by being put into fool's motley. In some stories tarred and feathered characters are misrepresented or mistaken for an unknown animal or the devil, and sometimes do not even recognize themselves. In a few cases tarring and feathering is done deliberately as part of a ruse.

Comics

The punishment of tarring and feathering in the American Old West has been "forever more given to posterity in comics". It is used in ironic fashion in the comic series Lucky Luke, where a number of antagonists - usually cardsharks and swindlers - are shown tarred and feathered. In Don Rosa's The Terror of the Transvaal (1993), the sixth chapter of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, syrup and feathers are used to punish a treacherous thief.

British satirical mezzotint print of a tarred and feathered man (1770).

Art

In the 1770s, when tarring and feathering was perceived as a novelty and became increasingly frequent in British America, a number of prints showing this punishment were published in England. According to historian Barry Levy these pictures both catered to a sense of thrill, as well as anti-American sentiments. One mezzotint from 1775 also depicted women - "probably seductively and fearfully pornographic" - being tarred and feathered before any such a case was actually recorded. Marina Trininc remarked that English prints emphasized the feathers, as e.g. geese symbolized "weak intellects and moral unnaturalness", while the "racialized dimensions of this punishment", the association of the tar with black skin, "were lost in translation across the shores".

The neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibited the paintings Black Tar and Feathers, and Untitled (Yellow Tar and Feathers) in 1982, the later a painting which scholar Fred Hoffman interprets as containing "young black heroic figures" and speaking of "a rising above the pain, suffering and degradation associated with the act of being "tarred and feathered."" In the view of art historian Leonard Emmering, the "blackness of tar is [...] associated with Basquiat's skin color", and his Tar and Feathers painting "refers to the racist practice of tarring and feathering black men."

On stage

Tarring and feathering appeared in several English plays in the 1770s as a novel element used in "a satirical and comedic context". The appearance of a victim of the punishment was also used as a costume in a masked ball and other public appearances of that time. Much later, in Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man (1957), tarring and feathering is demanded as punishment of the main character Harold Hill, con man and Trickster figure, for his scam.

Television and film

A victim of tarring and feathering depicted in American short film Mother's Angel (1920).

Tarring and feathering has been depicted in television and film in different functions, for drastic effect, realistically, or in a humorous manner: In the 1972 John Waters "trash cinema" film Pink Flamingos, Connie and Raymond Marbles (played by Mink Stole and David Lochary), are tarred and feathered. Here this act of retribution for a series of misdeeds against the film's protagonist, Babs Johnson (Divine), is one of the signs showing her "defiance of feminine cultural norms". The episode "Join or Die" of 2008 HBO miniseries John Adams has Adams witnessing an angry Boston mob tarring and feathering a British tax office. While effective as a "chilling portrayal" of the procedure, the situation around it is historically inaccurate. In American Horror Story: Freak Show episode 8 "Blood Bath" (2014), The Lizard Girl's father is tarred and feathered in retaliation for his role in his daughter's intentional disfigurement. This is presented as a both gruesome and satisfying act of retribution. In the film Revenge of the Nerds (1984) characters Lewis Skolnick and Gilbert Lowe are tarred and feathered by the Alpha Betas in response to their attempt to seek admittance to the fraternity. Despite the overall funny tone of the movie, the scene connects to "a public form of humiliation used throughout history", "a sort of lynch mob mentality" directed against the minority, here the eponymous nerds. In the episode "The Gang Cracks the Liberty Bell" (2008) of the television series It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Mac and Dennis, while dressed as British nobles, are tarred and feathered by colonial Americans in light-hearted "hilarious scenes".

A number of the depictions on screen refer back to the era of the American Wild West, some in a mythologizing and some in a more realistic manner. In the film Little Big Man (1970), adapted from the 1964 novel by Thomas Berger, con man Meriweather and title character Jack Crabbe, played by Dustin Hoffman, are shown being tarred and feathered for selling a phony medicinal elixir. The cruel procedure is used as a tragicomic element illustrating this "revisionist retelling of the Wild West saga", as the leader of the perpetrating mob turns out that to be Jack's long lost sister. In Daniel Knauf's Carnivàle, in an episode called "Lincoln Highway" (2005), Clayton "Jonesy" Jones, the crippled co-manager, is tarred and feathered almost lethally. The procedure here is presented as a deserved punishment for the accidental death of several children at the ferris wheel under Jonsey's responsibility. It is anachronistic for the 1930s setting, but one of a number of references in the series back to the American frontier. Similarly, the 2012 film Lawless set in the 1930s has been considered a "Western-gangster film hybrid". A bootlegger shown tarred and feathered was one of the violent images shaping the impression of the film. The episode "Complications" (2005) of the Deadwood TV series, African American character Samuel Fields is tarred and feathered in a racist "eruption of mob violence that acts to express and purge the anger of the town's whites" in scenes clearly depicting the horror of the procedure. The season 1 episode "God of Chaos" (2011) of the AMC TV series Hell on Wheels depicts a character, The Swede, getting tarred and feathered before getting run out of town.

In animation tarring and feathering has been used for comic effect, with no serious or lasting impact on the characters. In the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote short film Guided Muscle (1955), Coyote tries to apply a tar-and-feather machine to Road Runner, who already has feathers. And as usual in these cartoons, Coyote becomes the victim of his backfiring plan, but is humiliated rather than seriously harmed by the procedure. In the TV series The Simpsons characters are tarred and feathered in several episodes as dark humour. For Bart Simpson as a perpetrator, Divya Carolyn McMillin cited the procedure as an example where the character "was unapologetic and acted on impulse", making him appealing to youths, which was possible in animation in contrast to real live as no consequences for Bart were shown.

Marina Trininc observed in 2013 that tarring and feathering has appeared in recent American films and series against the backdrop of terroristic attacks in the US and worldwide.

Video games

In the video game Curse of Monkey Island, Guybrush Threepwood is tarred and feathered by monkey crew members of a pirate ship, treating the procedure in a less-than-serious manner. He later uses this to pose as El Pollo Diablo, a giant chicken who has terrorized the area.

Music

Tarring and feathering appeared as a topic in music already in the 18th century: A verse from an early (British) version of "Yankee Doodle" relates to an incident involving a "Yankee" Minuteman named Thomas Ditson of Billerica, Massachusetts:

Yankee Doodle came to town,

For to buy a firelock,

We will tar and feather him,

And so we will John Hancock.

More recently it has been used in the title of several works: The second track off the cult British Indie band Cardiacs 1987 Mini LP Big Ship was titled "Tarred and Feathered". The music video for this song was infamously played on Channel 4's The Tube, which was remarked for the song's unusual nature and the band's unusual visual appeal. The 2010 EP from The Hives is called Tarred and Feathered. The 2005 album Gutter Phenomenon by metal band Every Time I Die contains a song punningly titled "Guitarred and Feathered".

In other cases the procedure featured within the lyrics: In the Merle Haggard hit "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers" (1964) with lyrics by Liz Anderson, there is a line saying "he "should be taken out, tarred and feathered" for his foolishness" of trusting the woman who would betray and leave him. Haggard's biographer David Cantwell found that the performance influenced how this image was percieved: In a version by Roy Drusky it comes off "as self-effacing", but when "Haggard sings the line, it's as if he's identifying exactly the punishment he deserves." To be tarred and feathered is mentioned in the chorus of the song "To Kingdom Come", from The Band's album Music from Big Pink (1968), as one of the fates to be feared. The 1996 R.E.M. song "Be Mine" contains the lyric "I'll ply the tar out of your feathers," potentially a reference to tarring and feathering. In satirist Tom Lehrer's album An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1959), his introduction to the song We Will All Go Together When We Go mentions an acquaintance of his who was "financially independent having inherited his father's tar-and-feather business".

Depicting the artists tarred and feathered has also been used as a means of promoting music: The avant-garde electronic music artist Fad Gadget (Frank Tovey) often performed on stage while tarred and feathered. He was photographed in tar and feathers for the cover of his album Gag (1984). Artist Martynka Wawrzyniak described the function of this device as allowing "you to step outside of your comfort zone and do something different". Tovey himself "interpreted the shock value of his presentations as 'commerical suicide'" as they were "challenging, or degrading to the pop star ideal"; popular music scholar Guiseppe Zevolli saw this as the artist "exploring the link between his role as a performer and the power of media to influence their audiences." The Hives band members were likewise depicted on the album cover of Tarred and Feathered, presented in a style of a newspaper subtitled "Cheating with other people's songs!", as the EP contained only songs covered from other artists.

Metaphorical uses

The image of the tarred-and-feathered outlaw remains a metaphor for public humiliation many years after the practice became uncommon. To tar and feather someone can mean to punish or severely criticize that person. This example comes from Dark Summer by Iris Johansen: "But you'd tar and feather me if I made the wrong decision for these guys." The perhaps earliest instance of such metaphorical use is in a letter by Benjamin Franklin from 1778.

In more recent years, tarring and feathering can refer to cancel culture, or mass vendetta campaigns on social media.

Influence

Archaeologist Rainer Atzbach assumed that the public awareness of tarring and feathering has contributed to another legend present in popular culture, the use of hot tar and pitch as a defensive weapon in medieval castles.

References

Category:Topics in popular culture Category:Tarring and feathering in the United States