It doesn’t make me feel the way you do

Reading dating apps and digital intimacies in Smiley (Netflix 2022)

Bibliographic Data

ID7202786
AuthorsMatthew Hilborn (0000-0001-5915-2955, ISNI: 0000000107682743 University College Dublin, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume38
Issue3
Pages227-254
Publication date2025-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Iberian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1758-9150 • E-ISSN: 1364-971X
PublisherIntellect (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1386/ijis_00166_1
OpenAlexW7127385816
LanguageEN
References cited29

This article examines Smiley (2022), a Catalan- and Spanish-language LGBTQ+ romantic comedy on Netflix, as a critical intervention in debates over digital intimacies and platform-mediated relationships. As both romcoms and relationships themselves become increasingly platformized, the article analyses how the series visualizes the digital enclosure of dating through split-screen aesthetics and palimpsestic overlays, formally mirroring the fragmented, gamified nature of dating/hook-up apps like Grindr. Smiley dramatizes the affective labour and disorientation inherent in data-driven matchmaking, interrogating tensions between somatic and cyber-mediated intimacies. Reflecting broader trends towards physical, flesh-and-blood sex in Netflix romcoms, amid the post-romantic, heteropessimistic turn in screen productions, it balances queerer modes of interface design, digital affect and embodied sex with traditional genre discourses of the Soulmate and The One. While offering a nuanced critique of quantified, marketized love, Smiley ’s prioritization of corporeal, monogamous, (homo)normative connection over multiple, virtual encounters reveals both the constraints and possibilities of contemporary (LGBTQ+) courtship and social bonding

Affect (linguistics · Courtship · Embodied cognition · Metaphor · Mirroring · Performing arts · Reading (process · Romance · Smiley · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

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