According to our case material, the brutalizing effect of the injury-to-the-eye motif causes a blunting of the general sensibility. Kids feel in a vague subconscious way that if this kind of thing is permitted then other acts are so much less serious that it cannot be so wrong to indulge in them either.
Kids of the early 1940s thought this motif was horrible. Today's kids take it for granted. These literal horror images have desensitized several generations.