ABSTRACT

The Star Wars franchise – and in particular the ‘in-universe’ period from the Fall of the Jedi to the Reign of the Empire – represents germane ground for the critical analysis of security in both everyday life and extraordinary circumstances. Although beginning with the films of the ‘prequel trilogy’ (1999, 2002, 2005) this period has most recently been covered in the animated television series Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021 –). Deepening the contribution of criminology towards a diverse and critical transdisciplinary field of security studies, this paper conducts a multimodal critical discourse analysis of season one of The Bad Batch. In doing so it describes how, in its depiction of a newly established Imperial regime, the Star Wars franchise has continued to engage with the politics of security through its exploration of the processes and practices of techno-securitisation. The Bad Batch thus acts as an ideological critique of developments in the late-modern securityscape. The discussion section reflects upon how the persistence of politics in the ‘Disney era’ of Star Wars storytelling, and of security politics in particular, indicates the limits of ‘Disneyfication’. The paper concludes by emphasising the value in bridging divides between distinct disciplinary approaches in the study of security.

摘要

星球大战系列——尤其是从绝地陨落到帝国统治的“宇宙中”时期——代表了对日常生活和特殊情况下的安全进行批判性分析的重要基础。尽管从“前传三部曲”（1999 年、2002 年、2005 年）的电影开始，这一时期最近出现在动画电视连续剧《星球大战：坏批次》（2021 年 - ）中。深化犯罪学对安全研究的多样化和关键的跨学科领域的贡献，本文对坏批次的第一季进行了多模式批判性话语分析. 在这样做的过程中，它描述了在对新建立的帝国政权的描述中，星球大战特许经营权如何通过探索技术安全化的过程和实践来继续参与安全政治。因此，Bad Batch充当了对后现代安全领域发展的意识形态批判。讨论部分反映了星球大战故事讲述的“迪士尼时代”中政治的持续存在，尤其是安全政治，如何表明“迪士尼化”的局限性。本文最后强调了弥合安全研究中不同学科方法之间分歧的价值。