Named from the phrase "the tall poppy gets cut down," an aphorism used in much of the current and former United Kingdom to describe resentment of those whose accomplishments elevate them in prominence above their erstwhile peers, Tall Poppy Syndrome is in play when a character or characters act to achieve parity with another character who is presented or perceived as somehow "better" not by improving themselves but by bringing him down to their level.
This trope is often found in Dystopias and Crapsack Worlds, and may also show up in Crapsaccharine Worlds. Indeed, in a Crapsaccharine World, Tall Poppy Syndrome may be the first clue that everything isn't as sweet and nice as it appears on the surface.
The term comes from a story about Tarquin the Proud, last king of ancient Rome. Tarquin was asked what to do with the leading men of an enemy city his soldiers had captured. He sliced the heads off the tallest poppies in his garden and so the enemy leaders were put to death by beheading. The idea, however, is even older: Herodotus describes Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, doing the same thing in a grain field as advice to Periander, who had just seized power in Corinth.
Also related is the Japanese proverb Deru kugi utareru — "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down" (in English, the phrase "proud nail" often has the same implication), which not only refers to ambition, but anyone who fails to conform; the Norwegian "Jantelov" (see below); the Philippine Crab Mentality or "Crab Bucket Syndrome", based on the myth that if you have at least two crabs in a bucket, you don't need to have a lid, because the other(s) prevent any one member from trying to climb out of it; and the Dutch proverb boven het maaiveld uitsteken, more or less literally, "standing above the level at which the field is mown". Russian proverb "Вот радость — у соседа корова сдохла" (Vot radost'—u soseda korova sdokhla "What a joy, a neighbour's cow has died") describes the schadenfreude borne out of such mentality.
See also Ambition Is Evil and It's Popular, Now It Sucks. Compare The Complainer Is Always Wrong. Contrast Social Darwinism and Moving the Goalposts, which are about making it harder for those at the bottom to climb up, rather than those below acting to bring down those who try to rise. Contrast also the American aphorism "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." Often associated with the Marxist doctrine "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." See also Enemies Equals Greatness where it's people who hate an individual for being great.
Examples in Fiction:
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Anime and Manga
In Boku Wa Tomodachi Ga Sukunai Yozora frequently attempts to sabotage, belittle or humiliate others who she feels are getting in the way of her friendship/potential romance with Kodaka. She refuses to make any sort of attempt herself.
Comedy
There's a joke where a dead Pole (as in, a dude from Poland) is escorted past the cauldrons that hold members of various nationalities, each one with a devil standing guard to push back in the ones trying to get out. At the cauldron for Poles, there are no devils, because of the given trope. Sometimes it's also about other people than the Poles, and sometimes it's set in a concentration camp, or a GULAG, instead of hell (with the prisoners having to work in clay pits or similar). There are versions of this joke involving Ukrainians and/or Russians.
A more serious joke: A man sits in his room and complains about his bad life. Then, an angel appears and tells him: "God cares about you, so He decided you get one wish - but whatever you wish for, your neighbor will get twice of it!" The man thinks about it: "So if I wish for a house, he'll get two? If I wish for a million dollars, he'll get two?" The angel affirmatives. Then the man states: "I want to be blind in one eye!" The angel leaves weeping.
A more subtly spiteful joke has the protagonist use his only or third wish to donate a kidney. Other common variants include the man wishing to "be beaten half-dead" or to have half his property be destroyed or to have a "mild heart attack".
Similarly, this one from the Soviet Union: A man is visited by a genie, who offers to grant him a wish. The man responds that his neighbor has a cow, but he himself has no cow. The genie asks if the man wants a cow of his own too. The man says no, that he wants his neighbor's cow to die.
Comic Books
In one story of The Smurfs, they found a magic egg which fulfills wishes. One smurf wishes for a big cake, but doesn't want to share it. (Not nice, but justified if anyone else can have as many wishes as he likes.) The next smurf then wishes for said cake disappearing.
Some comics in the Marvel Universe speculate this is why heroes there receive such poor responses from the general population. Super-heroes are extraordinary people with amazing abilities and dedicate their lives to improving the world around them, so normal humans feel weak and selfish by comparison. The Kingpin ties this into I Just Want to Be Normal and Muggle Power in a "The Reason You Suck" Speech in Ultimate Spider-Man #80.
The Kingpin: They, "society," hate you because they don't want your help. You remind them of how weak-willed and sheep-like and unspecial they are. How gleeful they are, deep down, to be ordinary. They don't want heroes. They don't want special people around them. Because if there are special people and they aren't one of them— well, who wants that? Who wants a constant reminder that they aren't even trying to be special? See, the difference between you and I is that you really are just a child. You benefit from the wide-eyed optimism of youth. I do envy that, somewhat. But... like many of your decisions in life... it's just naive. And I don't envy that harsh cold slap of reality that will come your way soon enough. But I guess it's inevitable. People don't want to be special. I do think that. It is my philosophy. They— people want to be told what to do and how to live and they want men like me to tell them. They want to go to work and do as little as they can possibly get away with, and they want a big cookie at the end of the day for doing it. And they want men like me to give it to them."
One early Spider-Man story revealed that J. Jonah Jameson suffers this in regards to Spider-Man. Hence his relentless persecution of the webslinger.
This trope was given as the reason the depowered superheroes receive no outside help in JLA: Act of God, because it turns out that all the Muggles and world governments are secretly happy that their superpowered protectors are now "on the same level" as everyone else. That's right, everyone is happy that Superman is gone. Doug Moench doesn't read many comics besides Batman.
Scrooge receives this treatment in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. When he returns to his hometown after making his first billion, he's immediately pelted with tomatoes: "The Highlands were nae good enough fer ya, eh?".
Which is hilariously built upon when Scrooge rages at the treatment, and the villagers are honestly shocked that he took offense.
Lex Luthor feels this way about Superman, he states no one man should have that much power. But Lex's logic is that no one but him should have that much power.
Fan Works
Story of the Blanks - This is the secret of Sunnytown. They murdered all ponies who received cutie marks, thus, anypony that excelled and stood out from the crowd
In the Lunaverse story Carrot Top Season, Applejack alludes to this in response to Carrot Top asking why there has to be only one farmer in Ponyville, rather than a cooperative group. “But in a group, the weak always drag down the strong."
This is used to set up the plot in Hot Fuzz. The protagonist, London police officer Nicholas Angel, is reassigned to a small village inThe West Country because his hypercompetence is making the entire rest of the Met look bad in comparison. Unfortunately, their figures go "a bit squiffy" without him, forcing them to swallow their pride and ask him to return...only to be told he's come to like the village.
The movie Blue State actually has a Canadian cite the tall poppy metaphor approvingly as part of introducing an American would-be expatriate to Canada.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: The Rt. Ordinary Horatio Jackson is presented with a heroic soldier who singlehandedly destroyed six enemy cannons and rescued ten captive soldiers. Instead of awarding him a commendation for his bravery, he is ordered executed so as not to demoralize soldiers who are less brave and capable.
Literature
Repeatedly touched on in Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism as Obviously Evil, with repeated connections to Marx's slogan, which the novels' government and Twentieth Century Motor Company, who implement Tall Poppy policies, interpret as "punish those with ability, and reward those without."
In Unseen Academicals when Glenda is resistant to her friend Juliet taking an opportunity for a lucrative and glamorous life as a fashion model, she's told by Pepe that this is an example of "Crab Bucket", but doesn't understand, and Pepe doesn't elaborate. When a fishmonger later tells Glenda that you can keep crabs in a bucket with no lid, since any crab that tries to climb out is pulled down by the others, she realizes what the reference meant. The lower class in Ankh-Morpork suffer from such a case of Tall Poppy Syndrome that anyone trying to elevate themselves is seen to be "giving themselves airs" and "having ideas above their station" and dragged back down by their peers - or, just as often, by themselves, these habits having become ingrained. Overcoming the "crab bucket" mentality is a big part of Glenda's Character Development.
This is a major factor in most of the Sharpe stories — the Establishment is deeply offended that a common soldier born to poverty could have become an officer. Then even more offended when he goes around being better at it than them. Similarly, a lot of the common soldiers resent being given orders by a "jumped-up Sergeant". To the point where they attempt to frag him several times
Deconstructed in Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, where everyone is literally handicapped to the lowest common denominator. Athletic people must wear heavy chains to make them slow and clumsy. Smart people wear earphones that randomly play loud noises to disrupt their thinking patterns. And beautiful people must wear masks.
Touched on in Lies My Teacher Told Me, I.E. any Native American who isn't living on the reservation/running a casino/wearing Braids, Beads and Buckskins isn't a "real" Native American.
In Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Screwtape expounds upon this phenomenon in Britain, drawing attention to the fact that, in the original story that gave the phenomenon its name, it was a dictator cutting off heads to insure that his subjects were all equal. Of course, Screwtape being a demon, he thinks this tyranny of the masses is one of the best things to happen to Britain in decades.
The Scandinavian term Janteloven ("the Jante law" or "the law of Jante") comes from the 1933 novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks by Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose. In this book, the first-person narrator comes from a small town called Jante in Denmark, where the working-class inhabitants follow the unwritten Jante law, which consists of rules that basically boil down to "You're shit just like us, and don't you dare forget it."
1: Don't think you're anything special.
2: Don't think you're as much as us.
3: Don't think you're wiser than us.
4: Don't convince yourself that you're better than us.
5: Don't think you know more than us.
6: Don't think you are more than us.
7: Don't think you are good at anything.
8: Don't laugh at us.
9: Don't think anyone cares about you.
10: Don't think you can teach us anything.
11: Don't think there's anything we don't know about you.
In The Adventures of Pinocchio (only the book), the blue fairy promised him he'd become a real boy if he's always well-behaved and gets good grades in school. Then one day, the other boys tell him that the monster whale was seen near their place, and that they should skip school to look for it. Pinocchio hesitates, but then decides to join them because he cares about Geppetto. When they go to the sea, no whale. Pinocchio gets suspicious, and wants to know what's going on. Then, the other boys tell him, that they'll look bad if he's an A-student, but if everyone in class was as lazy as they are, they'd be just average.
In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus complains that "All men are equal" has led to schoolteachers who promote all students instead of holding back underachievers.
Straight from the Gospels, and thus Older Than Feudalism: No man is prophet in his own land (on how Jesus Himself is panned in his own home village, Nazareth, when he tries to deliver His message). This trope is pretty much Word Of God, for some.
In Matched, Ky does this on purpose so, as an Aberration, he won't be selected to fight in the war.
This is the entire point of the book Among Friends by Caroline B. Cooney. Jennie Quint is regarded as pretty much perfect (except for math) at her school and she's a super-overachiever. Jennie herself isn't an egotist or a snob, but even her very best friends are getting really fed up with constantly being overshadowed by Jennie's perfection.
In Huckleberry Finn, Huck's father (a slovenly, abusive, and neglectful drunkard) is absolutely enraged by the fact that Huck is getting an education and a chance at a decent shot in life, because he thinks that now Huck is going to think he's above his dad.
This is a major theme in Girl In Translation. The main character, Kimberly Chang, is repeatedly shown to be jealous of her much wealthier classmates. On a more serious note, Kimberly's aunt forces her and her mother to live in a dangerous, roach-infested apartment and work long hours of hard labor in a Chinatown sweatshop from fear that Kimberly will be more succesful than her son.
In Invisible Man, one day when the protagonist is working for the Brotherhood he receives an anonymous, unstamped letter warning him, "Keep working for the people but remember that you are one of us and do not forget if you get too big they will cut you down." Only too late does he recognize who the familiar handwriting belongs to.
Live-Action TV
One episode of Cold Case involved the death of a black man who had managed to pass himself off as white in the 1950's. The murderer was motivated by this, accusing him of 'betraying his people'.
Survivor and just about every other reality show based on Voted Off The Island. If someone makes too good of a showing, the other contestants deem him/her a threat and vote them out. Hence, why Obfuscating Stupidity has shown itself to be a popular strategy.
In Arrested Development, George Bluth Sr. would deliberately denigrate Michael's achievements and suggestions as a way of keeping Michael looking for his approval (while privately acknowledging that Michael actually does well), while the rest of the family mostly looks on Michael's work ethic and financial sense as him lording it over the others (which Michael occasionally admits is slightly true).
In True Blood, this is the motivation behind a group of normal humans driving around and killing all humans with super-abilities. They don't try to hide it either.
Music
Among the criticisms leveled at My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade was that MCR was attempting to rise above their station with this album, at it was apparently TOO GOOD.
Calvin lampshades this in Calvin And Hobbes when he's proud of getting a "C". He finds life easier the lower he keeps below peoples' expectations.
In Zits, Jeremy is initially excited to get an "A" on a test...then suddenly has a vision of his parents saying they're proud of him and from now on, will expect him to bring home As on every test. Cut to the next panel where he says he thinks he blew it.
For that matter, he often feels this way towards Chad. Part of the reason being that whenever he comes home, he takes up everybody's attention. Even to the point where nobody asked him how his break was because they only wanted to know about Chad.
Tabletop Games
If you're one of the "lesser" evils (i.e., fiends), so to speak, in Dungeons & Dragons, everybody above you keeps bullying you just for kicks (and everyone below you keeps trying to take your job). The top-level guys have no one looking down on them, at least not honestly (as archevils and demon lords often don't think much of each other, but they're on more or less equal footing) but on the other hand, they're surrounded by legions of The StarScream...
Video Games
In Jak 3: Wastelander, after Jak beats Kleiver's high score at the Gun Turret challenge, Kleiver, ever the good sport, remarks, "The tall poppy has to be snipped sometime." Incidentally, Kleiver is depicted as having an Australian accent.
In Harvest Moon everyone will berate and snide you for using Golden Lumber for a fence because of how ridiculously expensive it is. The western assumption is that they're envious of your success. In Japan, however, it is considered extremely rude to brag about yourself in any way; wealth is just one such category. The player is supposed to conclude that the villagers are angry at him not because he got wealthy but because he had the temerity to show it off in public, which makes it more a case of Values Dissonance that catches American players by surprise (since America tends to look on public displays of wealth much more favorably).
A combination of this, genuine bitterness, and her own position probably being worse in its own way is why Goldanna, Alistair's half-sister, is so disdainful of him in Dragon Age: Origins. (Of course, if you were just trying to scrape by as a washerwoman and your half-brother walked in wearing elaborate armor and accompanied by three other people all dressed up equally fine...)
According to the novel The Calling, Alistair isn't even her blood relative, being a Half-Human Hybrid who doesn't have any of his elf mother's features.
In the Deus Ex Human Revolution tie-in novel Icarus Effect, the title effect is described as a biological as well as a social phenomenon where, to maintain "stability", if a small number out of a large group attains some distinct advantage, those lacking that advantage will attack the abberants until that advantage is gone.
In the Dead MoneyDLC of Fallout New Vegas, the reason Dean Domino tried to ruin Frederick Sinclair is because he was happier and more successful than him. It's also possible for him to develop this towards The Courier.
Valkyria Chronicles has a lot of powerful Japanese moral cultural influences, but Alicia probably suffers most from Tall Poppy Syndrome. Being the nail that sticks up puts so much pressure on her that being hammered down (which happens when Welkin makes her his wife) is the only thing that keeps her from killing herself.
Web Animation
Homestar Runner: Marzipan's 'pre-school' in a Strong Bad Email about coloring. makes fun of this trope. Marzipan gives Homestar, Strong Mad, and Homsar crayons that don't actually color, "so that no one Life Blossom shines brighter than any other".
Web Original
Cracked's article "The Crazy Sociology Experiment Buried in a Russian Game Show" notes that, in the Russian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, contestants "quickly became wary of asking the audience anything, because they'd almost always give the wrong answer." The theory is that the Russian audiences were deliberately sabotaging the contestants, to prevent them from rising above their peers.
In Russia, the audience viewed the million-ruple prize as a reason to mourn the fact that there's one less person to share the rampant poverty and despair with. That's harsh, Russia.
Western Animation
One of the major themes of The Incredibles revolves around this idea, where the superheroes are forced to give up "hero work". Originally this was because of a series of lawsuits and increasing public outrage and mistrust of supers in general; years later, this means Dash isn't allowed to go out in sports because he'd be too good, and Syndrome wants to give the world super-powers so that "when everyone is special, no one will be". On the surface, and at its core, with a thick layer of aspiring despot in between, Syndrome's philosophy is actually the antithesis of this trope - Raising everyone else so the people who naturally excel are average. Of course, Syndrome doesn't wish to artificially raise anyone, and if he wasn't doing it for megalomania and revenge (and if he weren't friggin' murdering superheroes as "test runs" to help his plan succeed), giving out jetpacks to people would be awesome.
Syndrome seemed to be more willing to arm everyone than just augment them, possibly placing dangerous weapons in the hands of people who would use them for evil. The movie suggested arms dealing was how he made all his money.
In "Simpsons Bible Stories", after the family realize that they had just Slept Through the Apocalypse, they see the Flanders ascend to heaven. Lisa then begins to ascend to heaven, but Homer pulls her back down and says "Where do you think you're going, missy?" The family then descends into hell together.
Another Simpsons episode has Marge tell a story that suggests the educational system does this.
The central conflict of the first season of The Legend of Korra revolved around the fact that some people were born with the ability to "bend" the elements around them, while most people were not. Combine with a government that unintentionally discriminated against non-benders, bender criminals, and the most popular sport in the city being professional bending, and you can understand why the Equalists would jump at a chance to bring everyone down to their level.
