Not to veer too far from your original post, but I feel the same way about torture in Disney Pixar movies.
Every single one has a torture scene- torture defined as “I’ll hurt you in some way if you don’t give me information or do XYZ for me”
Toy story - “where are your rebel friends now?”
Toy story 2 - " you can go to Japan together or in pieces. If he fixed you once he can fix you again , now get in the Box!!!"
Toy story 3 " not the nehru jacket from The Groovy formal collection" (Ken as he is tied up and being tortured by barbie) " where’s that manual!?!?"
I could go on forever, pick a kids movie from those publishers, there is a torture scene in it, for some reason.
I think Trends and patterns like what you describe are worth exploring because they give us warped senses of reality. There’s a large swath of the population right now that believes torture works to produce good information or cooperative captives, that does not actually match up with reality. Much like what you describe, I imagine there are a lot of unhappy women out there because they watch these Hallmark movies