History Main / TarAndFeathers

* Played seriously in ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'', where this is meted out to an activist judge who uses his powers to protect the gangbangers and drug dealers who prey on the protagonists' friends and family. The man is apparently not badly injured, but certainly does not enjoy the experience.
** All the more serious, because they use hot modern '''road''' tar. Similar in concept if not execution, thirteen federal agents are later forcibly stripped, their butts painted red, and run out of New England in a boxcar.

* ''Literature/MotherHolle'': The lazy daughter requests to enter into Frau Holle's service, fails to fulfill any of her duties, and expects to be given gold in return for doing nothing. Tired of her attitude, Frau Holle sends her back after spilling a large keetle full of pitch over her head. The pitch does not seem to be harmful, but it is impossible to remove.
* ''Literature/NeroWolfe'': In ''Death of a Dude'', when Archie questions a friend of one suspect (the murder victim had gotten the girl he loved pregnant and then deserted her), the friend says that she had indeed encouraged the suspect to seek revenge that day, but that he'd planned to tar and feather the man, not kill him. This causes Archie to reflect that at least now he knows why said suspect had visited a chicken farm and a roofing business that day, as he'd apparently planned to go through with the tarring and feathering before his victim turned up dead and been gathering the supplies.
* In Seamus Heaney's poem ''Punishment'', the tarring and feathering of Catholic women who fraternized with British soldiers during UsefulNotes/TheTroubles in the 1970s is made reference to. Heaney juxtaposes this with the punishment of Iron Age bog body the Windeby Girl who was supposedly punished for infidelity, suggesting that the punishment meted to women in Northern Ireland is very much rooted in ancient tribal traditions.

* Music/{{Grimes}} is covered is black liquid and has feathers floating around her in the music video for "Venus Fly."

* In real situations, the subject was forcibly stripped fully or half naked and covered in hot tar, which if hot enough would burn badly. There was probably a beating or two along the way. After being feathered, the person would be humiliated by being carried around on a ''rail'' -- not a rounded pole -- the cross-section is square or rectangular, and the corners undoubtedly dug in. That's where most fiction ends. Then consider that if the person survived, the cooled tar would need to be removed -- ''aggravating the burns and ripping out hair''. Being tarred and feathered was ''never'' a good or easily-overcome thing. ''Everyone'' would remember what was done to you.

* In ''Fanfic/ItGetsWorse'', a Rube Goldberg-esque chain of events causes supervillain Lung to be tarred, feathered, lifted off the ground by a giant balloon, blown up, and then dropped into a sinkhole full of wet cement when he attacks a chicken festival that a parahuman with the power of causing unlikely events that chain together to comically neutralize any threat to her or anyone she likes is attending.

[[caption-width-right:298:A ProfessionalGambler gets their comeuppance. [[note]] If you're curious, that sign reads, "Stranger, if you have put down more than 4 aces, you risk being put down too"[[/note]]]]