RIP Carroll Spinney

For just under a half century, a gentle giant named Carroll Spinney gave life to two of the most beloved and diametrically opposed icons in all of pop culture: towering yellow optimist Big Bird and caterpillar-browed misanthrope and longtime trash can dweller Oscar the Grouch. 

As Oscar the Grouch, Spinney made generations of children fall hopelessly in love with a character whose defining characteristic was that he was a fucking asshole, a shaggy green jerk who happily paraded his contempt for the friendliest, most lovable creatures in the world over a period of decades and was not just tolerated but adored for his crankiness. 

Oscar the Grouch let kids know that it was okay to not be happy and sunny and upbeat all of the time. Hell, Oscar was happy and sunny and upbeat none of the time and the world was all the richer for it. 

Spinney as Oscar illustrated that you could be grouchy and irritable and in a perpetual bad mood and still be not only accepted but loved and treasured by your friends and neighbors. Because God knows few, if any of us, can match Elmo’s sunniness or Snuffy’s shaggy affability but there’s a little bit of Oscar the Grouch’s exquisite curmudgeonliness in all of us, and a whole lot of it somedays. 

Oscar is an enduring icon in no small part because Spinney managed to keep his heart of gold well-hidden. Oscar could, of course, eventually and climactically be reached by Christmas cheer or the pure-hearted, Christ-like love of the monsters and animals and people around him or his own fatherly feelings of love and affection for his pet worm Slimey but he was no sap. He was an instinctive, intuitive enemy of maudlin sentimentality, of pap, of mindless positivity. 

Oscar stood strong and proud against everything that Sesame Street ostensibly stood for. His vinegary defiance made the show’s cotton candy sweetness and relentless sunshine more palatable. 

It’s hard not to relate, on a deep emotional level, to a character whose catchphrase is “scram!”, who just wants the world to go away so he can be left to pursue his weird, prickly obsessions, to luxuriate in trash of both the literal and metaphorical variety. 

In other words Oscar the Grouch was the antithesis of Big Bird. If Oscar wanted the world to scram Big Bird was every child’s friend, not just Snuffy’s and the gang at 123 Sesame Street. Big Bird was pure innocence, a towering bird with the pure heart of a child whose parents were seldom, if ever seen, but who seemed extraordinarily looked after and taken care of all the same, by Granny Bird and the adults and authority figures of Sesame Street. 

Big Bird took center stage in the deeply traumatizing 1985 big-screen spin-off Follow That Bird, which subscribed to the curious logic that the best way to bring America’s favorite talking bird to the big screen would be to relentlessly fuck with Big Bird for 89 minutes, to put him at the mercy of first a moronic adoptive bird family and then an abusive carnival run by Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty that forces him to sing a heartbreaking torch song as the ironically named “Bluebird of Happiness.”

In this case, Spinney arguably did his job too well. He poured so much heart and soul into his portrayal of Big Bird that the movie became emotionally shattering in a way that’s way too intense for children and adults such as myself. 

Spinney put his whole heart and soul into Big Bird and Oscar. He died during a year-long celebration of the show’s staggering 50th anniversary, a beloved figure of Muppet magic who played Big Bird and Oscar deep into his eighties. 

With Spinney’s death another revered fixture of all of our collective childhoods is gone, leaving the world lesser for his absence. The legendary puppeteer found great joy in grouchiness as well as sunny childhood innocence. I just fear the terrible memorial cartoons that will be composed in his honor; Spinney was a talented artist himself in addition to being one of the all-time great puppeteers so maybe it’s good that he’s not hear to see what kind of maudlin nonsense they’re subjecting poor Oscar to, ostensibly in tribute to Spinney’s spectacular life and career. 

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