[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lhZ5sL2xn-l08JUmTj-1XnHzf-b1urpl/view?usp=share_link](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lhZ5sL2xn-l08JUmTj-1XnHzf-b1urpl/view?usp=share_link)
This first trailer, which is now Lost Media for all of us who live outside the US (much like the show itself right now, as of early May of 2025) fascinated me in 2014 and made me eagerly await for months. It didn’t disappoint.
If you were to ask me which two-season show with a cult following should be revived (which is sadly a very common occurrence, even more now in the age of Netflix and Streaming), it would without a doubt be Galavant. It ticks all the boxes for me, someone with tv-tropes brainrot who spent much of her teenage years consuming the shows that Gen Xs, who were very fond of parodies and meta references, made. It’s the Arrested Development, Community, J*ss Whedon of it all. And it’s a musical! A musical! Nothing’s as amazing as a musical!
I like to think that not only is parody the sincerest form of flattery, but its is actually an incredibly useful tool to get the gist, the vibe, the key way people understand whatever it is they are parodying. It is the way I learnt most of what I know (re: the shows above). Referencing and homaging is something that post modern and or American media is very fond of: and many times those are made, lovingly, through humor. When I had to do a project on Indian English I immediately went to not Indian people speaking the ways in which they normally would use/speak English, but rather the ways they themselves (and others) parody their use/speech. This magazine in some ways works the same way, except without the element of parody (for the most part, as Fashion is Very Serious), but with the vague idea of what we may consider Medieval, which we are not even really entirely sure where it came from or even if it is Medieval at all (fashion-wise, many times it isn’t).
Many of the key elements of Romance and Courtly Love we have studied take me back to 2015 and 2016, when I eagerly awaited every Monday in January to download watch this wonderful musical parody of things I never even knew I would study.
So here, for my enjoyment and in the hopes that they will bring you as much joy as they have brought me in the past ten years, are some of the wonderful songs composed by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater (yes, of The Golden Age of Disney fame) that best parody some of the Romance tropes we have seen in class:
(spoilers ahead, of course)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLYiyK7uqUE
You're worse than crabs Worse than scurvy Worse than lice or plague But truth be told You're growing on me just like mold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVISWkCGXo
If I could share my life with you Just think how happy we'd be We'd share our hovel built for two Complete with vermin for three (…) Yes, life would blow But much less, though If I could share mine with yours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmMPYnmNtUw
I want you, I need you You cut me, and I bleed you You’re like some kind of sonnet All I want to do is read you
Here Galavant is giving Astrophil a run for his money, and Magdalena… well…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNy16_OJVkI
Love is strange (…) And it's awkward and confusing It annoys you half to death Then it grins that dopey grin And you can't catch your breath
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGv0839DlcQ
It was the world's best kiss And it was utter bliss Though it was moister than I thought it would be (…) And in my dreams I still can taste it Slightly yeasty Oddly musty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAmd8QgHvik
The skyball's doing its shine-thing The moving air is so sweet This flopsy colorful vine-thing (…) And those wingy-beasts with their feathers They make a squeaky-like sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBrZ7t4HY_A
I like to... talk loud Play rough I ain't got time for that girly girl stuff I'm a different kind of princess, can't you see? I don't lift my pinkie when I'm sipping tea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKtmIyLXgt0
And I ride to save my one true love Though she ripped your heart in two Not true Pretty true Very true (…) And I ride to help the princess Who I've taken neath my wing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CPIMA-hBiY
Where is the gallant knight? Who stood for truth and right? The valiant dragon slayer, Galavant Where is his steely gaze? The abs the poets praise? Whatever happened to that Galavant?