@Sturgis,
You used the key words:
senseless violence. A
lot of cartoons aimed at kids, especially a lot of comedic ones, are chock-full of senseless violence. What's the point of it?
As far as I know now most kids don't learn anything from it and if anything it can negatively influence their behavior.
Maybe sensible, intelligent kids learn not to do any of the senseless violent things they see in cartoons. There are reports that kids see so much violent acts on TV they become desensitized to it. My brother and I never tried to emulate the violent acts we saw in cartoons.
I remember back in the '90s
Darkwing Duck sparked a lot of contraversy, and two of the reasons was because they depicted characters talking about killing other characters, and the show made jokes about characters getting killed off. I think this was considered unheard of, shocking and unorthodox for a Disney cartoon show aimed at kids back then.
I remember my family and I temporarily stayed with another family back in the late '90s to early 2000's. The mother of the other family had three children; her youngest was a little boy.
One day I observed the little boy watching
Pokemon and
Digimon, two cartoon shows that were very popular at the time, and these were two shows the boy liked. When those cartoons came on the boy acted crazy, hyper and somewhat aggressive. Around this time there was news that a certain episode of
Pokemon caused millions of kids to go into epileptic shock. That's evil.