Planet of the Apes Conundrum

Why does Taylor understand his predicament as an inversion, in other words, understand that apes were ruling men, and not grasp that he had to still be on earth, for this basic observation not to be nonsensical? Because, the audience is being told, this world is not our world, it is a fantasy world in which it makes sense for Taylor to feel this way. 

The movie, the audience assumes, is an allegory: the signifying order is not that of real time, anywhere. Otherwise how could we not already know where we were? In this place, what looks like apes are not; what look like humans are not . . . they are aliens!  Thus to call them apes makes the movie about a realm detached from the real continuum of experience we understand to be operating in scifi movies.  Because in this signifying order, Taylor does not know he is on earth.

Then the end of the film reveals that we are on earth after all, the whole time, and that our framing was wrong. No allegory, this was a science fiction movie after all!  This causes vertigo.

Now you see racism is revealed as such: he hated apes even though he had no idea where he was.  Even though, of course we knew, we sort of knew the whole time.

The context-independent hate is prejudice, racism. The same problems that were destructive of America in the 1960s destroyed her for good-- we were fooled by the Black astronaut's scientific curiosity, so out of stereotype's range, we felt we were in a post racial world -- the forces that drowned Liberty, are in Taylor wherever he goes.