I actually heard an interview with Quentin Tarantino about Django which, I think, touches on this. He talked about the difference between scenes where slaves were being whipped and brutalised, about how those scenes are difficult to watch, and the cathartic violence of the action sequences.
This, combined with our own experiences of games and Jim's helpful video, might yield the answer that looking at all violence as "violence" is inaccurate and unhelpful, just as looking at "words" as an aggregate is equally meaningless as it overlooks the complexity of the subject.
Visual interpretation, or rather presentation, is a form of language. It conveys nuance and differing emotions.
Lets explore this theme of mine though. Maybe it's bullshit.
What about rape? Rape as catharsis. The mind immediately leaps to Hentai pornography, with it's absurd presentations of bucket loads of bodily fluids and gravity (or eucledian geometric) defying protagonists. The whole genre is aimed at male empowerment fantasies and the concept of female degradation being so openly freudian in its revenge/acceptance of the mother figure theme as to be comical. Indeed, there are whole libaries devoted to this theme. I've checked.
But is it harmful? Is it wrong?
Let us proceed on the assumption that "standard" pornography is fine for the sake of argument. Afterall, it operates to fulfill the same male empowerment need without the same worrying component. Does watching pornography, or anything for that matter, reinfoce themes within the psyche of the viewer? It causes the viewer to think about the subject of sex in much the same manner if I were to mention white elephants you would think about white elephants or at least the linguistic statement. That is just a shape though, an amorphous blob.
If I were to flesh out the theme of the elephant, give the elephant a name for instance and craft a story about him, then it takes on a whole different form. The form of a concept rather than just an image. If the concept I impart is that of a destructive beast that does harm and should incur wrath and death as a consequence then that is what I am imparting; white elephants are a problem.
What if I tell a story where you are a white elephant though? A story where you are a white elephant who goes around raping and killing? What if I call it "Rumbo-fuck 4" and you play it with a controller?
It's fundamentally fluff. The brevity of the experience and the shallowness of the portrayal might excite the tendancy of a hardcore sadist, but would not go far enough. It may form one part of a larger exploration of themes of victimisation, but (I would suggest) not be "wrong" in itself.
Perhaps though it could be paving on the road to damnation though. One cobblestone on the way from fantasy to enaction.
I would go so far as to say that it is obsessive immersion in any one theme, whether it is hateful female victimisation or cleanliness or body image or anything, that is destructive.
