Flattened Affect

It seems to me that in literary novels there's almost no emotion.  In psychological terms that's called flattened affect.  People don't seem to react.  At all. 

Throughout the media people don't seem, to me, to react appropriately to situations calling for heightened emotion. That's not to say we don't see people becoming emotional, hyperemotional really, on television all the time, but that's not an appropriate reaction.

If we want to focus on soap operas which I have some experience with, the earwigs will tell the writers to have all four burners turned up to high all the time.  So you get the chewing the scenery kinds of emotions.  They're not accurate or specific.  I don't know what kind of emotions there are in the Twilight movies.  They all look like they're under heavy medication.

Is there some middle ground ie reality?  Do we live in a society where genuine emotions are becoming rare?