![]() Beginning with a 2008 theatrical release ( Star Wars: The Clone Wars) before finding popularity and acclaim as a television series of the same name, this content depicted events in the Star Wars universe between the live action theatrical releases Attack of the Clones (Episode II) and Revenge of the Sith (Episode III). ![]() Inspired by Andrew Wilczak’s exploration of the Star Wars film franchise using the tools of radical (or critical) criminology (Wilczak, 2021), this paper takes a deeper dive into the Star Wars universe by exploring the Lucasfilm Animation produced Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In fact, the famous opening text crawl of the original 1977 Star Wars film, subsequently titled A New Hope (Episode IV), highlights the ongoing ‘civil war’ and the role of ‘Rebel spies’ in successfully stealing the plans for the Empire’s weapon of mass destruction, the Death Star. Themes of crime, policing, intelligence, spying, subterfuge and, of course, war permeate the Star Wars universe. ![]() Beginning here, this article explores the representations of undercover policing and intelligence operations in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. 131) has highlighted how academic disciplines do not have a monopoly on cultural representation in society. However, it is important not to over-estimate the import of scholarly accounts into public awareness of this topic. Marx ( 1988) and Jean Paul Brodeur ( 1992) to more recent research by Raphael Schelmbach ( 2018) and Nathan Griffin ( 2021). This situation is ameliorated slightly by a long-standing academic interest in undercover policing: from the pioneering scholarship of Gary T. Mass media representations of undercover policing are of importance given their recurrence across multiple media channels, alongside the infrequency with which individuals will ever knowingly encounter an undercover officer or become aware of any covert police operation. This paper similarly contends that media representations of crime and policing matter, and representations of undercover policing in particular. In the most recent edition of The Politics of the Police (Bowling, Reiner, & Sheptycki, 2019) the point is emphasised that the news media and entertainment industry have for decades projected the métier to the general public, with important consequences for police legitimacy. The paper concludes with a reflection on the consequences of this depiction, arguing that for those practitioners who are willing to engage with representations of their craft in popular culture there are valuable practical lessons to be learned from such fictional accounts. The overall analysis indicates that The Clone Wars projects an important critique of the morally problematic nature of the militarisation of policing and the routinisation of deceptive undercover policing practices. The paper contends that despite its status as science fiction The Clone Wars engages with several of the real-life practices and challenges of undercover policing and intelligence operations. Through a multimodal critical discourse analysis this paper explores the representations of undercover policing and intelligence operations in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This paper takes as its starting point the contention that media representations of crime and policing, and undercover policing in particular, matter.
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