Individualistic aesthetic forms

In my recent reading, I came across this quote from Murray Smith:

"while both the novel and Hollywood films are individualistic forms, it would be simplistic in the extreme to argye that they merely reflect the individualism of modern Western society and, equally unequivocally, perpetuate this individualism." (Engaging Characters 235). 

A well-crystalized statement of some of the issues I've been working through in my chapter on 40s literary adaptations.