How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
She seemed to think that if kids watched television one night a week with parents or stepparents, the effect would be to de-glamorize the medium in their eyes, make it wholesome domestic sport. [TV's] narcotic undertow and eerie diseased brain-sucking power would be gradually reduced. (4.18)
The fact that this passage refers to the effect of TV as "narcotic" is no accident. Babette wants her children to dislike TV, so she plays the ol' reverse psychology on them and forces them to watch as part of Family Fridays. She hopes that by doing this, she'll take away the glamor of watching TV and her kids won't end up watching so much that they rot their proverbial brains out. In the modern world, almost all distractions can be viewed as drugs, and it's necessary to try to make kids consume them in moderation.
Quote #2
It was the following night that I discovered the Dylar. An amber bottle of lightweight plastic. It was taped to the underside of the radiator cover in the bathroom. (24.1)
Throughout White Noise, Jack has had reason to suspect that Babette is secretly taking some sort of medication. He finds it by accident when he checks out the radiator in the bathroom and finds the pill bottle. He doesn't really know what to do, so he goes to the person who knows about this sort of thing: Babette's eleven-year-old daughter Denise. This scene gives us our first real proof that Babette might need something stronger than TV or sex to get her through the average day.
Quote #3
"We were to be the test subjects in the development of a super experimental and top secret drug, code-name Dylar, that he'd been working on for years." (26.36)
Eventually, Babette has no choice but to confess to Jack that she volunteered as a test subject for a secret drug named Dylar. No one knew what the drug's side effects would be, but the fact that she volunteered anyway suggests that Babette is desperate to get over her fear of death.