Violence in Cartoons, by Alaa Kadhim Al-lawati Grade 11

A picture describes a thousand words, so, a person might read a book but not understand it, but he might catch a glimpse of its cover's picture and understand it fully.With that said, I would like to point to one thing that has appeared in the 1930's and is ongoing and that is, cartoons.

Cartoon is a form of picture animation done with the purpose of entertaining an audience. The audience may be kids, teenagers or even adults. The pictures or characters drawn are most of the time imaginary, few cartoons have a non-fictional plot whereas the rest are all fictional. Cartoons can have many genres ranging from comedy to action to sci-fi to many other genres.

Nowadays, there are many channels that broadcast cartoons as their main programmes and that is because they have realised how beneficial they are. Cartoons are of the greatest indirect methods of teaching which are extremely effective with children. A child can be taught a foreign language other than his mother language via cartoons if that  cartoon is is that cartoon is in a foreign language, but the teaching doesn't stop there, not only a child can learn a new language, but can learn precious values that will stay engraved upon his memories for eternity, but they can also be harmful.

The fact that there are several audiences for cartoons is a negative side. A kid might not be aware that what he's watching maybe targeted towards adults and thus, might be inappropriate for his age, not to mention that they might include profanity and that could teach the kid indecency, yet, he won't stop watching because cartoons are addictive.

I personally think that cartoons are double edged weapons that should be handled carefully as they benefit or harm. It all depends on how they are used and what kind of cartoons they are.