More often than not, demons are portrayed as exceedingly biological.
That sentence above was the first part of a tweet that sprang to mind upon reading the manga Berserk. (The last part of the tweet, if anyone happens to be interested, was "Interesting, that." It was an old tweet.)
Oh, by the way, hey, spoiler alert, sort of.
As I was saying, Berserk. It's got demons in it, and they are very fantastically biological. Meaty and gooey and bloody and phlegm-y. Of course, it is a manga, which came from Japan, but the point regarding demonic biology still stands. After all, it's not like it's an isolated incident occurring only in Japan. Aside from other Japanese examples containing dark and diabolical appendages, which I am not going to name, similar images have also been evoked in what is now called Western (pop) culture. To name a couple: Neil Gaiman's Sandman's Lucifer's Hell and the various hellish creatures in the video game Darksiders.
Let's take a look at each of them.
In the comic Sandman, created by Neil Gaiman, Hell is a domain ruled by Lucifer, most of the time. It is not a place of punishment; at least, not like it is popularly imagined. But yes, there is a lot of pain in Hell. Perhaps that is why the inhabitants of Hell, the demons, the damned, and even the decor are nearly all flesh. Soft, sticky, pink flesh. And it makes sense. I mean, to incorporate pain you need corporeal form. Even if sometimes they are corpse-like ones.
That was Mr. Gaiman's work. In Darksiders, however, the function of biology in Hell is not so readily apparent. Rather, it seems that it was a differentiating tool to thematically distinguish the warring factions. While the Legions of Hell are, as I'm sure I've hinted previously, made up of organic beings (including a dragon, no less), the Host of Heaven, in contrast, wear somewhat futuristic-looking mechanical armors. They have laser wings. Blue laser wings. And guns. Guns, in Heaven. And the two armies wage war against each other, and puny humans get caught up in the fray. (And you play as War, but that is not directly related to my point. Read on.)
There are, I suspect, many more portrayals of the organic nature of demons. But, as I'm not so diligent a person, I will jump to conclusions instead of doing the additional research.
I am going to guess that we humans loathe, and subsequently demonize, our physiology. We view the carnal part of our existence as primitive and unrefined, while admiring artificial and increasingly unnatural (if we are allowed to use that strange term) devices. I am not contrasting physical and spiritual aspects; that is perhaps a discussion for another time. What I am trying to assert is that perhaps we assign negative values to the basic biology which we have had since our birth, and view technology as good, 'advanced,' and, ultimately, something worth pursuing almost in exclusion of all else.
Ah, generalization is so very fun. And simple. And it makes the world go round, so....
