World War II is the last time that human violence, including nuclear weapons, could conceivably be fully unleashed without destroying humanity altogether. It was also the last time that market society would conceivably have to fight for survival. For victory in WW II and the ensuing impossibility of all-out conflict guaranteed victory in the Cold War as well, although we did not see this at the time. The antisemitism that reaches its paroxysm in the Holocaust is the sign of the extreme form of this closure, which would revoke the Hebrew abolition of the figural center that is the foundation of Christianity as well as Judaism. If Saving Private Ryan's realism reveals the founding violence of the postmodern era, it is particularly noteworthy in today's historical context that it does so while remaining entirely free of PC .
Women appear, only very briefly, as mothers, wives, typists.
The crudity of this scene reflects Hollywood's own prejudices, less against women than against the great unbicoastal Center. In Saving Private Ryan , popular culture returns from the celebration of resentment, whether through the display of victimization or of gratuitous violence, to the memorialization of our last, foundational sacrifice. I hope I will not spoil the film for anyone by revealing the simple but powerful narrative trick of the frame story. This reassures us that he will survive amid the carnage. But after the body of the film is over, we see that it is not Captain Miller but Ryan himself who kneels before what is now revealed to be Miller's grave.